By Jenny Wilson, MDThe second in-person IPSO congress was held in Toronto, Canada March 22-24. First, a little about the IPSO congress history. Because of COVID, the inaugural IPSO congress was virtual and the first in-person congress took place in 2022. This year’s...
IPSO Blog
Summer Camp for Pediatric Stroke Survivors
By Tricia PlumbHow can physicians, medical providers, children, and families come together for a few days of education and fun for everyone? Enter Morgan’s Wonderland in San Antonio, Texas, an accessible camp for children with disabilities. Last summer, I went to this...
Great Expectations: A Bright Future for Vein of Galen Malformation (VOGM) Treatment
By Mesha Martinez I remember the experience like it was yesterday. I stood outside in the dark, talking to the child’s mother on my phone while the child’s anxious father and other family members crowded around me. As I took off my mask, I was glad that the darkness...
Treating Two “Puffs of Smoke” in the Brain — What is the best approach for operating on children with bilateral moyamoya arteriopathy?
By Michael Xie and Risheng XuLiterally meaning “hazy” or “like a puff of smoke” in Japanese, the term “moyamoya” is also the name for an arteriopathy that causes narrowing of the arteries of the brain. This restriction of blood flow leads to the formation of many...
Reflections on the 2023 IPSO Meeting
By Jenny WilsonIPSO had its 3rd conference virtually, April 28-29th, 2023. The goal of the conference was to “unify the global community of professionals engaged in research and clinical care for children with cerebrovascular diseases, and chart a path forward for...
Interview with Dr. Peter Sporns, author of the Save ChildS Study
By Nidhi Ravishankar & Arpita Lakhotia.The Save ChildS study1 is the first retrospective, multicenter cohort study that analyzed databases from 27 stroke centers in the United States and Europe suggesting comparable safety data for endovascular thrombectomy (EVT)...
Deficiency of adenosine deaminase 2 (ADA2), what are we missing?
By Ariane Soldatos & Amanda Ombrello. Case: A previously healthy 14-year-old patient presents with a small stroke in the basal ganglia following upper respiratory symptoms. You do the usual vascular, cardiac and thrombophilia work-up which is unrevealing. You...
Hemorrhagic Stroke in Childhood: News and Views in Managing Cerebral Vascular Malformations
By Mesha Martinez. At the inaugural in-person IPSO Founding Members' Congress held in Vienna, Austria, the session "Hemorrhagic Stroke in Childhood: News and Views in Managing Cerebral Vascular Malformations” was co-moderated by Dr. Mesha Martinez. Below is a vivid...
Arteriovenous Malformations in children: risk of recurrence following apparent cure.
By Erika Chandler & Arpita Lakhotia.As physicians, when we encounter a child with stroke symptoms, we ask ourselves “Is this hemorrhagic or ischemic stroke?” as the treatment and outcomes are different. To put it simply, hemorrhagic stroke occurs when there is...
I-ACQUIRE Trial Presentation During IPSO Meeting
By Warren Lo. On July 21st, 2021, at the IPSO Virtual Conference, I shared a brief presentation on the I-ACQUIRE Trial, funded by the National Institutes of Health in the US. This is a multi-site trial comparing 2 dosages of a form of intensive pediatric...
Reflections on the first IPSO Virtual Conference
By Grégoire Boulouis, Peter Sporns and Jenny Wilson. IPSO had its first conference July 19-21, 2021 after COVID-19 obliterated plans for an in-person conference in 2020 in Vienna, Austria. While there was a feeling of disappointment in not being able to meet in...
Predictive Value of Imaging Features in Pediatric Acute Ischemic Stroke
By Bin Jiang and Warren Lo. The rehabilitation center at Stanford Children’s Health is home to pediatric patients who have suffered a pediatric arterial ischemic stroke (AIS). Their prolonged rehabilitation process and their determined mindset has left deep...
International Alliance for Pediatric Stroke & Pediatric Stroke Resources
By Mary Kay Ballasiotes. At the International Alliance for Pediatric Stroke (IAPS), we know how important it is to have a support network for families to help them navigate life after a child’s stroke. There is nothing more reassuring than being able to turn to...
IPSO’s International Perspective
By Heather Fullerton. When we first conceived of IPSO a few years ago, one explicit goal was to obtain a global perspective on cerebrovascular disease in children. The factors that lead to pediatric stroke are heterogenous and complex, some poorly understood mix of...
Dysphagia, Motor Speech and Language Following Pediatric Ischemic Stroke
By Victoria Sherman and Mahendra Moharir. It was during my clinical work as a Speech-Language Pathologist (SLP) at an adult acute care hospital in Toronto where I initially realized the true prevalence of dysphagia following adult stroke and its impact on patient...
COVID-19 and Pediatric Stroke: What is the Connection?
By Lauren A. Beslow.In May 2020, the New England Journal of Medicine reported a series of 5 young adult patients who presented to the same hospital in a two-week period with larger artery strokes as a presenting feature of COVID-19. This high profile NEJM...
Arteritis and Large Vessel Occlusive Strokes in Children after COVID-19 Infection
By Brian Appavu and Todd Abruzzo. In the summer of 2020 the Phoenix Children’s Hospital pediatric stroke team encountered a previously healthy 8 year-old child with severe clinical stroke secondary to acute large vessel occlusion. The child, who had a history of...
American Congress of Rehabilitation Medicine Annual Conference- An important educational and research platform for pediatric stroke rehabilitation.
By Todd Levy.The American Congress of Rehabilitation Medicine (ACRM) is the largest organization for rehabilitation research in the United States and includes many nations. Its’ mission is to improve lives through interdisciplinary rehabilitation research. Its’...
Kids have strokes, too?
By Ratika Srivastava. I am a pediatric stroke fellow at the Alberta Children’s Hospital in Calgary, Canada. Whenever I tell people what I do, they invariably say, “OH! I didn’t know kids have strokes. That’s so sad.” And it is sad – but it is not without hope....
Introducing the International Challenging Pediatric Stroke Case Conference!
By Megan Barry and Mukta Sharma. Pediatric stroke management can be challenging due to the wide range of etiologies, rarity of stroke at a single institution and need for collaboration with many different disciplines to achieve the best outcome for a child. The...
The International Paediatric Stroke Study (IPSS): A highly successful study vehicle for paediatric stroke research on a global scale
By Nomazulu Dlamini and Alexandra Linds. The International Paediatric Stroke Study (IPSS) was established in 2003 through a visionary collaboration of 11 international colleagues with expertise in paediatric stroke. For over 15 years, the IPSS has served as the...
Teamwork in Pediatric Stroke
By Jenny Wilson and Peter Sporns. Many pediatric hospitals have developed systems to respond to an acute pediatric stroke. These systems involve collaboration between physicians, nurses, and other experts hospital-wide from a diverse set of backgrounds and training,...
Return to school during the COVID pandemic: Information for families with children affected by stroke
By Adam Kirton.As clinicians caring for children with stroke and cerebrovascular disease, most of us have been fielding questions from parents about whether they need to take special precautions to protect their children during the pandemic. There are no clear...
Back to school for physicians
By Bethany Johnson-Kerner. Parents, teachers and even some physicians are shocked when they learn that children can have strokes. Although rare, children who have had strokes may experience significant adverse outcomes, including impaired cognitive skills, diminished...
COVID-19 & pediatric stroke—French guidelines & IPSO COVID Watch
By Heather Fullerton. After our May 13th blog post about COVID-19 and pediatric stroke, French IPSO members, Dr. Manoëlle Kossorotoff and Dr. Stéphane Chabrier, kindly shared with us their pandemic guidance for children with cerebrovascular disease. Hôpital...