UB MED DOCTOR VISITS
“I love it when we help a child sleep better.”
CARE FOR CHILDREN WITH SLEEP PROBLEMS
Pediatric sleep specialist Amanda Hassinger, MD ’05 Amanda Hassinger, MD ’05, clinical associate professor of pediatrics in the Jacobs School of Medicine and Biomedical Sciences, vividly recalls the moment when her career as a pediatric sleep specialist began. While attending patients in the pediatric ICU during a busy overnight shift, she was unable to discharge a child with suspected sleep apnea. No pediatric sleep doctor was available, nor was there a sleep lab for a diagnosis. “It wasn’t safe for him to go home,” Hassinger explains. Yet the child’s bed was needed for another child who was in shock and potentially near death. A tense conversation with the pulmonologist led to the realization that a sleep center for children was vital in such a situation. “What would it take to get one, and how long would it take?” Hassinger asked the pulmonologist. The answer: one year. “That was how it all started,” says Hassinger, now medical director of the UBMD Pediatrics Sleep Lab at Oishei Children’s Hospital. At that point, Hassinger had a decade of experience in pediatric critical care, both in her native Buffalo and at Northwestern University/Children’s Memorial Hospital, where she completed her pediatrics residency and a fellowship in pediatric critical care. Eventually she returned to Buffalo to the pediatric intensive care unit at what was then Women and Children’s Hospital of Buffalo. She earned a master of science degree in epidemiology from the By Ann Whitcher Gentzke
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FALL 2022
UB MEDICINE
UB School of Public Health and Health Professions in 2015 and completed a sleep fellowship in 2020. She then worked with her colleagues to establish the UBMD Pediatrics Sleep Medicine Center with a pediatric-dedicated sleep lab that opened in July of 2020. The center provides medical support for all sleep problems in children, including nightmares, sleep walking, insomnia, sleep apnea and narcolepsy. Hassinger has a longstanding interest in research and has worked on several multicenter, NIH-funded trials in the pediatric ICU. Currently, she is working on funding for an ancillary study to a large 10site project led by Sapna R. Kudchadkar, MD, PhD, at Johns Hopkins University, to address early mobility intervention for critically ill children in pediatric ICUs. Heavy sedation, bedrest and delirium all contribute to immobility, yet fewer than 25 percent of critically ill children mobilize early in their PICU stay. Hassinger’s portion of the study would evaluate children’s sleep in the PICU at two sites, using wrist devices and sound and light monitors, as well as parental descriptions of how their child has slept. “We would like to see if any of these factors change how long they’re in the ICU, and how often they develop delirium, because children absolutely develop delirium from being critically ill,” she says. Asked what gives her joy professionally, Hassinger says: “My patients! I find children remarkable and lovely and surprising and resilient. From my time in the ICU, I have amazing memories of what children survive and how they endure. I love it when we help a child sleep better, and they feel better and the whole family feels better.”
