{"id":6018,"date":"2024-05-13T09:02:26","date_gmt":"2024-05-13T09:02:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/?p=6018"},"modified":"2024-05-13T09:25:44","modified_gmt":"2024-05-13T09:25:44","slug":"failure-to-thrive-or-a-failure-to-look","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/?p=6018","title":{"rendered":"\u2018Failure to Thrive,\u2019 or a Failure to Look?"},"content":{"rendered":"
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The word \u201cfailure\u201d is rampant in medicine. Hearts, livers, lungs, and kidneys all \u201cfail,\u201d which simply means they cease to do their job. But the failures that patients tend to remember are the ones that seem to indict not an organ but an entire person. Just ask anyone who has been told that they have \u201cfailed\u201d vaginal delivery (meaning that labor was slow or the cervix didn\u2019t dilate) or \u201cfailed\u201d chemotherapy (meaning that the tumor didn\u2019t respond to treatment).<\/p>\n

Worst among these phrases, many doctors say, is a common diagnosis for both infants and older adults: \u201cfailure to thrive.\u201d<\/p>\n

In pediatrics, the term refers to infants who struggle to hit key milestones in size, weight and cognitive development. When Dr. Deborah Frank, a retired pediatrician, was in medical school in the 1970s, the diagnosis meant one of two things: \u201cEither you had major congenital heart disease or cystic fibrosis, or you had a bad mother,\u201d she said. \u201cOr maybe you had both.\u201d<\/p>\n

If the term sounds slightly accusatory, that\u2019s because it is. It arose from the idea that struggling infants were ailing not because of any underlying disease or lack of nutrients but because of poor parenting.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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The first known appearance<\/a> of \u201cfailure to thrive\u201d was in the 1933 edition of a medical textbook, \u201cThe Diseases of Infancy and Childhood.\u201d An explanation for the condition came near the end of World War II, when Ren\u00e9 Spitz, an Austrian psychoanalyst, observed<\/a> that infants in a Mexican orphanage tended to be listless, scrawny and slow to develop.<\/p>\n

This concerning syndrome, Spitz surmised, resulted from a lack of \u201cmaternal affection, maternal care and maternal love.\u201d Pediatrics took the idea and ran with it\u200b \u2014 \u201cin the fine old tradition of mother-blaming,\u201d Dr. Frank said. (A similar psychoanalytic idea that became popular around this time was \u201crefrigerator mother theory,\u201d which posited, incorrectly, that autism was caused by \u201ccold mothering.\u201d)<\/p>\n

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The word \u201cfailure\u201d is rampant in medicine. Hearts, livers, lungs, and kidneys all \u201cfail,\u201d which simply means they cease to do their job. But the failures that patients tend to remember are the ones that seem to indict not an organ but an entire person. Just ask anyone who has been told that they have \u201cfailed\u201d vaginal delivery (meaning that labor was slow or the cervix didn\u2019t dilate) or \u201cfailed\u201d chemotherapy (meaning that the tumor didn\u2019t respond to treatment).Worst among these phrases, many doctors say, is a common diagnosis for both infants and older adults: \u201cfailure to thrive.\u201dIn pediatrics, the term refers to infants who struggle to hit key milestones in size, weight and cognitive development. When Dr. Deborah Frank, a retired pediatrician, was in medical school in the 1970s, the diagnosis meant one of two things: \u201cEither you had major congenital heart disease or cystic fibrosis, or you had a bad mother,\u201d she said. \u201cOr maybe you had both.\u201dIf the term sounds slightly accusatory, that\u2019s because it is. It arose from the idea that struggling infants were ailing not because of any underlying disease or lack of nutrients but because of poor parenting.The first known appearance of \u201cfailure to thrive\u201d was in the 1933 edition of a medical textbook, \u201cThe Diseases of Infancy and Childhood.\u201d An explanation for the condition came near the end of World War II, when Ren\u00e9 Spitz, an Austrian psychoanalyst, observed that infants in a Mexican orphanage tended to be listless, scrawny and slow to develop.This concerning syndrome, Spitz surmised, resulted from a lack of \u201cmaternal affection, maternal care and maternal love.\u201d Pediatrics took the idea and ran with it\u200b \u2014 \u201cin the fine old tradition of mother-blaming,\u201d Dr. Frank said. (A similar psychoanalytic idea that became popular around this time was \u201crefrigerator mother theory,\u201d which posited, incorrectly, that autism was caused by \u201ccold mothering.\u201d)We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and\u00a0log into\u00a0your Times account, or\u00a0subscribe\u00a0for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber?\u00a0Log in.Want all of The Times?\u00a0Subscribe.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":6020,"comment_status":"close","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6018","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-lifestyle"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6018","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=6018"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6018\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6021,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6018\/revisions\/6021"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/6020"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6018"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6018"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6018"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}