AM:STARs: Case Studies in Adolescent Health

AM::STARs:: Adolescent Medicine:: State of the Art Reviews is the official publication of the AAP Section on Adolescent Health. Published 3 times per year, the journal offers adolescent medicine specialists and other primary care physicians who treat adolescents state of the art information on all matters relating to adolescent health and wellness. Each issue centres on a specific topic area and experts in those areas are invited to contribute review articles that cover the most up to date information available.

Each case presentation in this issue has a lesson to teach. As with the previous volume, contributions were solicited by open invitation on the Society for Adolescent Health and Medicine’s listserv, and authors were instructed to submit concise case presentations with a discussion and a limited number of references. Many of the first authors are physician fellows in adolescent medicine. Cases are presented in alphabetical order by first author’s last name. Medical, surgical, mental health and ethical challenges are addressed. Cases include common adolescent health problems with unusual presentations as well as unusual disorders (“zebras”) rarely encountered in adolescence. Readers are invited to formulate a differential diagnosis based upon the case presentation before reading the discussion. We are confident that even our most experienced and senior clinicians in adolescent health care have not encountered the full range of conditions described in this volume.