Skilled Care to Meet a Growing Need
Comprehensive and convenient services
Allergies and asthma are among the most common — and increasingly prevalent — health problems and can have major effects on a child's life. Immunodeficiencies are rarer, but can be chronic and debilitating. If your child has an allergy or immunodeficiency, NewYork-Presbyterian's treatment teams include seasoned professionals who care for infants, children, and adolescents with a wide range of allergic and immunologic conditions. We offer your child and family personalized and multidisciplinary care.
What we treat
Our allergy and immunology specialists are expert at assessing and treating patients with wide range of conditions, including:
- Asthma
- Anaphylaxis
- Chronic sinusitis
- Allergic rhinitis (hay fever)
- Drug reactions
- Insect allergies
- Latex allergies
- Allergic skin disorders such as eczema (atopic dermatitis) and hives (urticaria)
- Food allergies and hypersensitivities
- Primary immunological deficiencies, including severe combined immunodeficiency (SCID), natural killer (NK) cell deficiency, antibody deficiencies, defects of the innate immune system, and undiagnosed immune deficiencies
- Defects of immune regulation, including early-onset autoimmune diseases, recurrent fever, and/or systemic inflammation
- Genetic causes of allergy
- Angioedema and swelling syndromes
- Allergic eosinophilic gastrointestinal disorders that cause inflammation in the digestive system, including eosinophilic esophagitis and food protein-induced enterocolitis syndrome (FPIES)
Common signs & symptoms of allergy and immunology problems
Your child's allergy or immunological disorder may cause a variety of symptoms, depending on the type. Examples include:
- Rashes
- Hives
- Difficult breathing
- Coughing
- Wheezing
- Itchy eyes and/or throat
- Excessive sneezing and/or runny nose
- Feeling of tightening in the throat
- Trouble swallowing
- Recurrent infections
- Chronic infections
- Infections with unusual infectious organisms
- Early-onset autoimmunity or other dysregulation of the immune system
- Combinations of allergic, infectious, inflammatory, or autoimmune symptoms
How we diagnose allergies and immunodeficiencies
To determine the cause of your child’s symptoms, we use an array of diagnostic tests, such as:
- Skin or blood testing for environmental and food allergies
- Pulmonary function testing for asthmatics
- Blood tests to evaluate immune system development and function as well as genetic causes of immune deficiency
Our Approach to Care
Our teams include award-winning pediatric allergists and immunologists and nurses, dietitians, and others with experience caring for children with allergies and immunologic disorders. We utilize state-of-the-art immune system diagnostics and genetics to pinpoint your child’s immune disorder, using the results to customize a treatment plan to relieve and prevent symptoms and restore quality of life. We partner with you to provide education about medications, the appropriate ways to use them, and how to avoid allergy triggers. If your child has a food allergy, we work with you and your child to help eliminate those foods from the diet. Our teams collaborate with specialists in all areas of pediatrics. If your child has healthcare needs outside of allergy and immunology, we have clinical experts here who can address those as well.
Treatment of allergies and immunodeficiencies
We offer the most effective medications based on the findings of the latest clinical studies. Therapies that may include:
- Methods and teaching about how to avoid allergens
- The latest and most effective corticosteroids (anti-inflammatory medications for patients with asthma)
- Bronchodilators to ease breathing
- Immunotherapy (allergy shots and under-the-tongue treatments), which can help your child develop a tolerance to allergens
- Immune modulator therapies for difficult-to-treat allergic conditions
- Antihistamines
- Immunoglobulin replacement intravenously or subcutaneously (under the skin injection) to provide immunity to common infections
- Targeted biologic therapy for specific genetic immune deficiency or dysregulation
- For severe immunodeficiency disorders, we collaborate with the bone marrow transplant team to provide state-of-the-art stem cell transplantation
Why Choose Us
Columbia University and Weill Cornell Medicine clinician-scientists are involved in several areas of research in allergy and immunology, and our faculty members have published widely and achieved international acclaim for their work. Our teams include national leaders studying the causes of and treatments for asthma, food allergies and allergic diseases of all sorts, immune deficiencies, immune dysregulatory disorders, and hereditary angioneurotic edema.
NewYork-Presbyterian is also home to one of only a handful of New York State-designated Severe Combined Immunodeficiency (SCID) Specialty Care Centers. We offer comprehensive diagnostic testing, treatment, and follow-up care for SCID and will see your child quickly in our SCID Specialty Care Center. Whatever your child's allergy and immunology needs, we have the experts here to treat them. Call us today to learn more.