At nearly every pediatrics visit, I make sure to review the child’s growth charts with the parents/caregivers. Most of the time, my nursing staff and the EMR make this relatively routine. But what about a preterm infant? Should I use the WHO or CDC charts? Is their blood pressure normal? What if they have Down’s Syndrome or some other chromosome disorder?
Those are times that I need an anthropometric calculator app! For some of the common newborn and general pediatrics issues, we recommend your turn to UpToDate, Dynamed, or Essential Evidence Plus. We also love to use Pedi QuikCalc, and Baby Weight Tools. All of these are reasonable and contain similar information. Pedi QuikCalc deserves a particular shout-out. The app by Kent Bonney, MD, is really a Swiss Army knife of an app since it performs drug dosing, resuscitation drug calculations, newborn weight loss calculations, and bilirubin monitoring and treatment information; the app is cheap, but still costs $4.99.
But if you just want one app that is free — as in it costs nothing — then, as usual, Steinberg’s Baby Weight Tools is the one to beat as it not only does the “hard math” for newborn infant weight loss prior to discharge/follow-up, it also predicts weight gain for “failure to thrive” infants.
But neither of these apps cover all the possible weight (and BP) related issues we encounter in caring for children. Daniel Metzger, MD, a pediatric endocrinologist at Boston Children’s Hospital, has created the outstanding AnthroCalc app which pulls together seemingly every anthropometric calculator out there into one app.
Likes
- Easy to use, rapid calculations, excellent graphics/graphing capability
- Numerous calculators for growth, blood pressure, syndromes, and preterm infants
- Available for Android
Dislikes
- Lacks hyperlinks for references
- Can’t toggle between CDC/WHO with data saved easily
- The interface is entirely black/white which can be challenging to view for some
This post appeared on iMedicalApps.com.
Last Updated October 30, 2020
Source: MedicalNewsToday.com
