Paediatrics, the XXXVI National Congress of Sipps starts tomorrow in Florence
From 5 to 7 July, over 300 participants and 80 speakers from all over Italy will take stock of children's health
ROME – The XXXVI National Congress of Sipps kicks off tomorrow at the Palazzo degli Affari in Florence, entitled ‘Preventive and Social Paediatrics: the planet of new generations’. Until Sunday 7 July, over 300 participants and 80 speakers from all over Italy will take stock of children’s health also in relation to environmental issues: this is the main theme on which Sipps has in fact decided to focus this year, wanting to ask ourselves exactly what world we want to leave as a legacy to our children. ‘Sipps – explains the president, Giuseppe Di Mauro – is a scientific society always immersed in reality and can boast a long and glorious tradition. If we want to connect it to the Nipiology Foundation, it has now reached a century of life. As an independent scientific association, it has a slightly shorter history, around 60 years, which is linked to that of the Italian Society of Paediatrics. However, Sipps has always had its own specific peculiarity, namely that of constituting the link between the parent company Sip and the sector companies connected to it.
Sipps projects, therefore, respond to children’s old and new problems, pediatricians often address them even before they emerge , trying to implement the intervention that has always been most effective: prevention. Four keynote lectures are scheduled for the first of the three days of conference work. After the inauguration we will begin tomorrow with the one relating to epigenetics and the development of new generations and with the consideration that it is not just a question of physical, chemical and biological factors. According to Umberto Simeoni, professor of Pediatrics, Director, Division of Pediatrics & DOHaD Lab, University Hospital and University of Lausanne, Switzerland, ‘the understanding of the adaptive role of acquired factors, environmental in a broad sense, in the development of the child, be they physical, chemical, biological or human and relational, today rests on solid foundations scientific. If the basis of existence remains inscribed in the genome, it is known that, for example, the way in which parenting and education are carried out guides the development of the child from the moment he possesses sufficient cognitive and linguistic functions, and that culture it is indispensable, beyond nature, to the well-being and good health of the adult that the child will become. on the new role of the pediatrician. ‘It is evident that the growing complexity of the diagnostic framework and the range of therapeutic options that will be made available to patients with congenital immunity deficiencies – he states in his report entitled ’70 years of Clinical Immunology: future diagnostic-therapeutic perspectives’ Professor Luigi Daniele Notarangelo, head of the Laboratory of Clinical Immunology and Microbiology of the National Institute of Health-NIH in Washington – will require new skills and continuous updating from the pediatrician: without prejudice to the need to be able to suspect possible immune defect patterns, the pediatrician will have to knowing how to network with reference centers for the study of these pathologies’.
‘Moreover – continues Professor Notarangelo – progress in the diagnostic and therapeutic field will facilitate, even more than today, the survival into adulthood of patients suffering from pathologies for which, until a few years ago, the prognosis remained very uncertain still in pediatric age. Consequently, the pediatrician’s need to know how to liaise with adult doctors will become even more pressing.
On the first day of the Congress, space will then be given to an analysis of the demographic crisis we are witnessing today, by Dr. Chiara Ferrari , curator, together with Enzo Risso, of the ‘Flair 2024’ report by Ipsos in collaboration with Centromarca. An analysis under the banner of the message ‘I would like but I can’t, I could but I don’t want to: desire, necessity and birth rate decline. Approach the demographic crisis as fans’.
In Italy the birth rate decline has been a growing phenomenon for several years. The causes are multiple and include economic, social and cultural factors. These include job instability, the increase in the cost of living and the difficulty in reconciling work and family. Changing family patterns and personal priorities, such as postponing motherhood for career reasons, also play a significant role. This trend has important implications for the demographic, economic and social future of the country. What emerges above all from the report is an increasingly individualistic society and a greater gap between rich and poor.
A closing the first day of the XXXVI Sipps National Congress will be Donatella Lippi, who will focus on the figure of the child in the history of medicine. ‘The images of children – highlights the Full Professor of History of Medicine at the School of Human Health Sciences of the University of Florence – confirm how, in medieval society, there was no feeling of childhood, as the awareness of the particular infantile characteristics that distinguish the child from the adolescent and the adult: as soon as the newborn could live without the constant care of the mother and nurse, he belonged to the adult society. ‘It will be during the eighteenth century – Lippi then makes known – that the foundations will be laid for the birth of anthropometry and paediatrics, thanks to the attitude inaugurated by the French Revolution, when apparently ‘new’ categories of citizens, that is, old men, women and children, became objects of the individualized medical gaze’.
‘Saturday 6 July – declares the president of Sipps – first of all we will dedicate ourselves to the discussion on the update of the Practical Guide to Pediatric Orthopaedics, which was finally printed this year. We will then present all the inter-company documents that required our utmost commitment and which, as I explained, are proof of how ours is a scientific society that is increasingly immersed in reality. The documents were created with the intention of protecting the children and families of our country. Some examples: the Consensus on the judicious use of antibiotic therapy in airway infections in developmental age’ and that on ‘Children and adolescents who practice sports’, the ‘Manual for the prevention and management of indirect damage in children at the time of Covid-19′ and the Consensus on the extraskeletal effects of Vitamin D’. Among the issues that are very close to Sipps’ heart, there is certainly the environment. ‘The pediatrician can intervene to improve the environment – recalls Di Mauro – we must certainly do our part together with families and make children understand that their behaviors are fundamental to protecting the environment around them. It is they, the new generations, who will inherit and must be guardians of the environment.
‘ Already in 2017 – the words of Sergio Bernasconi, Full Professor of Pediatrics at the Microbiome Research Hub, University of Parma – the World Health Organization estimated that at a global level environmental pollution affected 25% of diseases and that a reduction in the risk environment could prevent infant mortality, under 5 years of age, by 25%. The problem is more serious in middle- and low-income countries, but high-income countries are not exempt. For example, a recent review of the literature highlights a possible correlation between air pollution, a problem present in the European Union although slowly reducing, and some childhood cancers such as leukemia. The role that pollution has on chronic diseases is also well known: respiratory, metabolic such as diabetes and obesity, cardiovascular, attributable to atherosclerotic, neurodegenerative and/or neurodevelopmental phenomena.
Great emphasis will also be given to the ‘Who Pocket Book On Primary Care In Pediatrics’: at Sipps and Fimp it is in fact the very important and prestigious task of translating the text into Italian for free, which will then find space on the two web portals, has been entrusted. ‘This request – says Giuseppe Di Mauro – is a source of pride for our Company. It is a manual published by a large panel of WHO experts and numerous external reviewers, a pocket-sized volume in which the majority of pediatric pathologies are taken into consideration in a schematic and concise manner. Furthermore, the entire initial part of the ‘paperback’ is dedicated to pediatric primary care and its health assessments. Coordination was entrusted to Dr. Margherita Caroli’. The pediatricians attending the conference will be able to browse the pages of numerous guides: from the one on ‘Immunodeficiencies in the pediatrician’s office’ to the one on ‘Vaccination safely in the pediatrician’s office’, from the ‘Guide on childhood and childhood gynaecology’ adolescence’ to the practical guides ‘Developmental bioethics for the paediatrician’ and ‘Practical guide on allergies’. Without forgetting the ‘Pediatric Dentistry’ Guide, the one on the ‘Use of cortisone in pediatric dermatological pathologies’ and the ‘Ophthalmology in developmental age’ Guide.
THE FIRST GUIDE FOR FAMILIES
Not only that. Once again Sipps paediatricians are alongside Italian families. They also demonstrate this thanks to four other important editorial initiatives. The first, a practical guide entitled ‘The child in his family’, is aimed at parents and represents a real milestone for the Italian Society of Preventive and Social Paediatrics: it is in fact the first Guide for families sponsored by the Ministry of Health.
‘This is – informs Mauro- of a valuable and complete training and health education tool, well structured and organised, easy to consult and understand. The Guide can be read and assimilated as the child grows older, reread, consulted and meditated on, in case of doubt or insecurity it will allow parents to ‘grow’ together with their children. This book constitutes a valid support and an authoritative reference in support of conscious parenting to resolve doubts and satisfy the desire to know more, to delve deeper, to ‘understand’ and take care of children with the supervision and alliance of the pediatrician of trust, which nevertheless remains the main point of reference for the child’s health.
Every chapter develops a specific topic: birth, nutrition, growth, education, care, safety, law, preconception prevention and pregnancy. Each theme is easily highlighted visually, as each chapter is marked by a specific color to identify it easily and intuitively. At the end of each chapter, some practical advice relating to the topic covered has been collected, to resolve some commonly encountered situations. The second, however, is ‘Including 360’, a practical guide for the protection of disabilities, 360-degree help on what families and their doctor need to know. The beauty of this Guide is summed up in the image of a parent and a pediatrician who meet to face the difficulties related to disability. The Guide, which was born from the collaboration between Sipps and Sip, is a real practical manual in which everything you need to know to tackle disability together is described in a systematic manner and divided by specialty.
‘The peculiarity and value of this Guide – specifies the number one of the Italian Society of Preventive and Social Paediatrics – are in a fact that does not address health problems, managed by the pediatrician and reference centers, but those of everyday life that are on the shoulders of families: school, legal protection, taxation, all types of bureaucratic problems. It is the first time that 360° practical orientation support has been offered to families. Prevention, therefore, is the main mission of paediatricians, whatever their ‘sub-specialisation’ or field of expertise. work, from the territory to the hospital to the university. Accidents and their prevention are certainly one of the main topics of paediatricians’ activity. In Florence, therefore, there is space for prevention, from newborns to adolescents. ‘Mom, dad, will you protect me? Guide to accident prevention and life-saving manoeuvres’ is the title of this inter-company text that Sipps produced together with Fimp and Simeup. The Guide is aimed at families and also at Italian paediatricians in order to make them the main protagonists of educational information on the subject of accident prevention in developmental age, meaning the age between 0 and 16 years. The text clearly and exhaustively illustrates everything that can be done to prevent accidents at this age.
The Gynecology Booklet ‘Ask me’ is intended for older adults and focuses on sexual diseases or menstruation, topics intended for adolescents and families who today, mistakenly, find out about ‘Doctor Google ‘. A project created thanks to an innovative language, precisely that of adolescents. ‘There will be a series of short videos, lasting a maximum of 1 minute – underlines Di Mauro – during which a professional will answer questions, for example on the prevention of sexually transmitted diseases, on menstruation, on the entire sexual and emotional part, using a scientific language but with methods specific to an adolescent. Another way to testify to the presence of our scientific society alongside the young generations, the present and future ones. Designed for adolescents, it will also be very useful to parents, educators and paediatricians themselves, to suggest how to correctly respond to the doubts that our children express, without embarrassment, in the right ways and with the right words’.
On Sunday 7 July there will also be space for the ‘Consensus on the extraskeletal effects of vitamin D’, while the event in Tuscany will be opportunity to present the ‘Nutripiatto in Movimento’ guide, created as part of the broader ‘Nutripiatto’ project, a nutritional education program designed for the little ones and developed by Nestlé with the scientific contribution of the Campus Bio-Medico University of Rome and Sipps with the aim of responding to the needs of families who intend to make balanced food choices, educating children on the correct portioning of food, based on age and personal profile.
During the Congress the spotlight was also on atopic dermatitis, neurodevelopment, responsive parenting, sepsis, Formula Milk, osteomyelitis, orthopedic problems in obese children, immunodeficiencies and neonatal screening, awareness of risks of electronic smoking in adolescents, monoclonal antibodies, antibiotics, vaccination of the frail, fever, angioedema and obesity prevention.
‘Sipps – reiterates the president – is a company that is always immersed in reality and demonstrates this with the great support to colleagues in the future Paediatrics, residents and recent graduates, so as not to make them become brain drains from our country. Qualified training with our documents and our training events, recognition of skills with the participation of these colleagues in company activities, a spotlight on their activities in the dedicated sessions of ‘Future Pediatrics: Preventive and Social’: seven plenary reports included in the conference days , which will be an opportunity for discussion and mutual enrichment’.
‘Sipps wants to continue to carry out the own role as a scientific society – concludes Giuseppe Di Mauro – but the best results will only be achieved under the condition of two indispensable points: a strong reevaluation of the role of the pediatrician and an undisputed unity of pediatrics among all its components, i.e. family paediatricians, hospital paediatricians and university paediatricians. Because we must never forget that we don’t go anywhere alone’. At this link you can consult the program of the XXXVI Sipps National Congress: https://www.ideagroupinternational.eu/idea/assets/img/course/GQw< /p>