Pediatric Allergy and Immunology

New Patient Appointment or 214-645-8300

UT Southwestern Medical Center – through Children’s Health – provides comprehensive evaluation, diagnostic, and management services for children with suspected or known allergies, asthma, and immunologic disorders.

We are North Texas’s only academic-affiliated Allergy and Immunology program for children from birth to 18, and our physicians have an in-depth knowledge of evaluating and treating allergies and immunologic conditions.

A doctor is smiling and sitting next to a young boy in a clinical setting, holding medical instruments. — Drew Bird, M.D., visits with patient Mason Alexander, a patient in the Food Allergy Center at Children’s Medical Center Dallas.

Evaluation and Treatment for Pediatric Allergic Conditions

Allergic problems in the United States are the sixth-leading common cause of chronic disease, according to statistics from the American Academy of Allergy, Asthma & Immunology and the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases. Asthma is the third-ranking cause of childhood hospitalizations under the age of 15. Food allergies affect nearly 6 million children in the U.S., and their prevalence appears to be increasing.

At UT Southwestern, pediatric patient care and clinical activities are based at the Allergy and Immunology Clinic at Children’s Health, where we provide comprehensive evaluation, diagnostic, and management services for children with allergy, asthma, and immunological disorders.

All of our staff allergists/immunologists have been certified by the American Board of Allergy and Immunology. Our clinic staff also includes a clinical nurse specialist, respiratory therapist, clinical pharmacist, dietitian, and social worker. Working together, our team provides for all the needs of allergy and immunology patients.

Conditions We Treat

Our team offers specialized care to help each child and his or her family cope with life-threatening or life-altering allergic conditions.

Common conditions we treat include:

Anaphylaxis
Asthma

Eosinophilic esophagitis
Food allergies

Rhinitis
Sinusitis

Learn more about the care we provide at the Allergy and Immunology Clinic at Children’s Health.

Specialized Allergy Programs

To address the needs of our young patients, we’ve created specialized programs to help evaluate and treat common and challenging disorders.

Our Food Allergy Program provides individualized care for peanut and other food allergies.
Our Allergy Program offers testing and diagnosis for a comprehensive list of conditions, from nasal and sinus problems to allergies to bee stings.
Our Dallas Eosinophilic GI Diseases and Esophagitis Program (DEEP) offers a truly multidisciplinary approach to the management of eosinophilic esophagitis (EoE) and other eosinophilic GI diseases (EGIDs), with a pediatric allergist, pediatric gastroenterologist, dietitian, and child psychologist working together to formulate individualized care plans.

COVID-19 Vaccine Study

If you are 12-69 years old, had an allergic reaction that required the use of epinephrine or a visit to the emergency room in the last fifteen years, or you have no history of severe allergies, you may be eligible to participate.

Learn More

Clinical Trials

Our physicians and scientists are actively engaged in research and innovation. Current clinical trials focus on a number of critical areas in pediatric health, expanding treatment options, and redefining what is possible in pediatric medicine.

Evaluating and Treating Pediatric Immunodeficiencies

In our primary immunodeficiency clinics, we evaluate and treat children with a wide range of defects in the development and function of the immune system. Without proper management, these defects can cause children to be susceptible to severe and atypical infections, as well as to autoimmune and inflammatory diseases.

We provide thorough, thoughtful evaluation of these patients and, when necessary, treatments including immunoglobulin therapy, antimicrobial prophylaxis, and immunomodulatory medications. We collaborate with numerous other disciplines in pediatrics to provide multidisciplinary care to these often-complicated patients.

Our primary immunodeficiency provider, Chris Wysocki, M.D., Ph.D., is an immunologist consultant for the State Newborn Screening unit, and our program is the major referral center in North Texas for the evaluation of infants with abnormal newborn screens for severe combined immunodeficiency disorders (SCID).

We provide prompt and thorough evaluation to determine whether SCID is truly present and, if so, then management and counseling. We also interface closely with our bone marrow transplant team because these children sometimes require a bone marrow transplant or similar therapies.

We are also a Jeffrey Modell Foundation Diagnostic and Research Center. Goals include providing definitive diagnoses for all children with severe primary immunodeficiencies, performing cutting-edge basic and clinical research to learn from these patients, and educating practitioners in the community about primary immunodeficiency, to facilitate early diagnosis and treatment.