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Answers
Your destination for kids' health

  • Health and Parenting

    The infant formula shortage: Your questions, answered

  • Our Community

    United in diversity: Our Asian American and Pacific Islander community

    Clinical Care

    Preventing another infant formula crisis: What needs to happen now

    Patient Stories

    ‘They just cared about Levi’: Finding answers for a complex vascular ring

    Research

    A new angle on the cause of Alzheimer’s disease: Accumulating brain mutations

Have questions and concerns about the novel coronavirus and COVID-19? We've got answers.

More Stories

Patient Stories
Drew, who had Legg-Calve Perthes disease, dribbles a basketball

Always an athlete: Drew and Legg-Calve-Perthes disease

Tagged: hip preservation, hip reconstruction, orthopedics
Our Community
Infection preventionist Paula Conrad

Nurses Week 2022: Leading an enterprise-wide response to COVID-19

Tagged: coronavirus, infectious diseases, nursing
Patient Stories
Young girl with bandaged head smiling and giving thumbs up from a hospital bed

Seeds of hope for Annie: one family’s story of epilepsy care

Tagged: eeg, epilepsy, second opinion, seizures
Clinical Care
A profile photo of Lynnetta Akins

Nurses Week 2022: Leading the way in advancing nursing documentation

Tagged: electronic health records, nursing
Research
Nurse practitioner Katie Roy, one of Boston Children’s nurses celebrated during Nurses Week 2022.

Nurses Week 2022: Patients at high risk for adverse events related to sepsis

Tagged: icu, nursing, sepsis
Older posts

In the News

STAT: A mother, shaped by tragedy, embarks on a mission to advance custom medicines

February 9, 2022

WBZ-TV Channel 4: 16-Year-Old Figure Skater Back On The Ice Thanks To Boston Children’s Hospital Post-COVID Clinic

February 8, 2022

Vox: Why young children have waited so long for Covid-19 vaccines

February 3, 2022

Consultant360: Wanda Phipatanakul, MD, MS, on Allergic Asthma (podcast)

February 2, 2022

Becker’s Spine Review: Dr. Martha Murray earns clinical research award

January 31, 2022

Why we’re getting vaccinated at Boston Children’s

Learn why Boston Children’s employees and patients say they’re choosing to get vaccinated.

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Dr. Shwachman uses the sweat test box he invented to diagnose cystic fibrosis

The history of cystic fibrosis diagnosis

In 1955, Dr. Harry Shwachman, head of Boston Children’s Cystic Fibrosis Clinic, developed the first practical sweat test to diagnose cystic fibrosis (CF). It involved encasing the patient’s body in a plastic bag to collect sweat, then using the pictured device to measure levels of salt in the sample. Cystic fibrosis causes sweat to be 2-5 times saltier than average. The sweat test allowed for much simpler and earlier diagnosis of CF, crucial to effective treatment. A version of it is still the main diagnostic tool used today.

 

Learn more about Boston Children’s Archives Program. 

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