FORT WAYNE, IN- Summer is traditionally considered “sports physicals season.” However, pediatric and family medicine providers are urging parents to schedule well child visits at their offices,too, instead of relying only on sports physicals.
Sports physicals, required to make sure kids are healthy enough to participate in school sports, only provide a momentary “snapshot” of a youngster’s health situation that simply is not adequate, say physicians. The scope of a well child visit is much more robust than that of a sports physical.
“In pediatrics and family medicine, we look at the whole child,” says Duane Hougendobler, MD, Parkview Physicians Group – Pediatrics. “During that annual wellness exam, we’re looking at their mental health status, any old issues or injuries, heart problems, lung problems, asthma, diabetes, those kinds of things.”
Hougendobler stresses it’s that more in-depth approach to assessing a child’s overall health that can provide parents the peace of mind from knowing they’re doing all they can to take great care of their child.
Hougendobler, who leads the Pediatrics specialty for Parkview Health, has cared for generations of local children in his 40-year career as a Huntington pediatrician. He is particularly concerned that kids may have missed out on some of their needed immunizations as families curtailed some activities to lessen their COVID-19 exposure during the first two years of the pandemic. In addition to the fact that certain immunizations are required for a child to attend school, medical experts nationwide have begun expressing concern that decreasing childhood vaccination rates in recent years could open the door for some highly contagious diseases like measles to become more common again in this country.
“Vaccinations help strengthen a child’s defenses against serious disease, and there are specific reasons why we vaccinate against so many diseases now,” Hougendobler continues. “Measles, hepatitis A and B, chicken pox, mumps, rubella, tetanus, polio, HPV, rotavirus and others are NOT nice diseases. They can have consequences far worse than keeping your child out of school for a couple of weeks. These diseases can impact the rest of their lives.”
Well child visits also enable a physician to keep an eye out for conditions that may develop or worsen without being obvious.
“One of the big ones is scoliosis (curvature of the spine),” he says. “We’ve had that unfortunate circumstance where kids went to sports physicals before without getting annual wellness exams, and then they finally show up in our office and they have terrible scoliosis that wasn’t picked up on during the sports physicals. There are other things – like heart murmurs – that can be present even though the child seems to be OK. We look for signs of those conditions when they come for an annual visit.”
Screening tests performed in the office can help alert the physician to other issues that may need intervention.
“There are different screenings we’re doing much more aggressively than we did in the past,” says Hougendobler. “The recommendation from the American Academy of Pediatrics is that all kids 11 and above have mental health screenings for anxiety and depression, which we have seen on the rise during the pandemic. And kids around age 9 should have lipid tests – which can flag potential problems with diabetes, heart function and other issues – plus other tests as time goes on.”
Hougendobler encourages parents to schedule a wellness exam for their child with a pediatric or family medicine provider before rushing headlong into a packed sports activity schedule in summer and fall.