SickKids VS
Episodes
Can a $5 Kit Save a Baby’s Life? (SickKids VS Newborn Mortality)
10 Jul 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Newborn mortality is one of the biggest challenges facing global child health. One SickKids scientist is determined to change that with an inexpensive...
What Happens When a Cancer Trial Leads to Unexpected Results? (SickKids VS Leukemia)
26 Jun 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Despite advancements in treatment, leukemia survival rates have remained unchanged for years—until now. A groundbreaking clinical trial is transform...
When a Lifesaving Device Gets in the Way of Living (SickKids VS Mechanical Hearts)
12 Jun 2025
Contributed by Lukas
When Harper was four, she was surgically tethered to a machine the size of a dishwasher. It kept her alive as she waited for a heart transplant. But i...
What if the Hurt is in Your Brain — Not Your Head? SickKids VS Chronic Pain
29 May 2025
Contributed by Lukas
An accident at the beach left 15-year-old Lauryn in extreme discomfort for years. Pain is one of the body’s most important signals for survival but ...
How Their Transplants Led to Modern Love (SickKids VS Organ Failure)
15 May 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Organ failure is a race against time. Even when a transplant is possible, plenty can still go wrong. But major advances are improving the odds and cre...
Why Do Emergency Departments Need AI? SickKids VS Wait Times
06 Jun 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Many families rush to hospital emergency departments every day. Some don’t know why a child is sick. Some do. But they all share a common concern: h...
A Child Survives — But What’s Around the Corner? SickKids VS Cancer’s Shadow
30 May 2024
Contributed by Lukas
More children survive cancer than ever before. But the disease and the treatments take a toll. In adulthood, many survivors face serious or life-threa...
Are the Answers in Our Genes? SickKids VS Unexplained Seizures
23 May 2024
Contributed by Lukas
As a baby, Noel was diagnosed with a severe form of epilepsy. There are many types and causes, so to really help patients like him, it’s not enough ...
Why Is My Child Wheezing? SickKids VS Breathlessness
16 May 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Around one in five kids struggle to breathe at least twice a year. They miss school and soccer games. And they often end up in hospital for treatment ...
What If We Could Prevent Sudden Death? SickKids VS Cardiac Collapse
09 May 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Seth was 10 when he collapsed on the schoolyard without warning. As a baby, he’d been diagnosed with a disease in which the heart can suddenly quit....
Our Hospital CEO on How We’ll Heal the Future. SickKids VS The Odds
02 May 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Dr. Ronni Cohn is leading SickKids through a new frontier in medicine — to diagnose faster, treat smarter, and predict better. The CEO (who’s also...
Who’s Betting on the Next Big Breakthroughs? SickKids VS The Valley of Death
22 Jun 2023
Contributed by Lukas
A new wave of venture philanthropists is pooling their money to fuel major medical discoveries. The return on their investment? Saving lives. Meet the...
What Happens When We Pull a Neglected Disease into the Spotlight? SickKids VS Sickle Cell Disease
15 Jun 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Dr. Isaac Odame is making life easier for children with sickle cell disease—about half of whom in Canada will be seen at SickKids. Hear how he imple...
How Do We Treat the Untreatable? SickKids VS Rare Disease
08 Jun 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Five-year-old Michael is one of less than 100 people in the world with SPG50, an ultrarare genetic disease. In March 2022, a SickKids team dosed Micha...
Why Heart Patients Shouldn’t Fear Exercise. SickKids VS Fragility
01 Jun 2023
Contributed by Lukas
For families whose children have had major heart surgeries, the idea of exercise can be terrifying. Is their heart strong enough? What if their heart ...
Are Kids the Biggest Victims of the Pandemic? SickKids VS Mental Health Crisis
25 May 2023
Contributed by Lukas
The kids aren't all right. During COVID, depression, anxiety and eating disorders skyrocketed. Families struggled. And a SickKids team started gatheri...
Can Music Heal? SickKids VS Silence
18 May 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Not all medical instruments are surgical. Hear from a trio of music therapists as they share unique approaches—and songs—for soothing pain, buildi...
How Do We Help Families Cope with Cancer? SickKids VS Hardship
10 May 2023
Contributed by Lukas
A cancer diagnosis alone is scary and stressful, especially when it involves a child. But the emotional and logistical fallout also upends a family's ...
Trailer: Season 4
03 May 2023
Contributed by Lukas
SickKids VS takes you to the frontlines in the fight for child health, where we speak candidly to world experts, patients, and their families about bi...
How Should We Talk to Kids About Dying? SickKids VS Despair
09 Jun 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Nine-year-old Hunter is living with an incurable brain tumour and, naturally, she has questions. Hear how a SickKids Child Life Specialist is helping ...
How Do We Remember? SickKids VS The Unknown
02 Jun 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Sheena Josselyn and Paul Frankland’s paradigm-shifting work includes selectively erasing fear memories in mice and discovering what drives early chi...
What’s Happening to Daniel? SickKids VS The Odyssey
26 May 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Faced with new symptom after new symptom, Daniel’s family grappled for years with an unknown disease. But blood tests and body scans couldn’t reve...
How Do We Help Parents Help Their Kids? SickKids VS Parent Stress (Part 2)
19 May 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Early brain injury can cause unique behavioral problems for children and youth — and unique stresses and challenges for their caregivers. We introdu...
Can We Heal the Brain? SickKids VS Brain Injury
12 May 2022
Contributed by Lukas
When a child suffers a serious brain injury, doctors can help them cope with the consequences, but they often can’t fix the damage that has been don...
Are the Parents Alright? SickKids VS Parent Stress (Part 1)
04 May 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Parents of babies born with complex medical needs are at high risk of stress, anxiety, and depression. One doctor took notice. She reveals a new type ...
Trailer: Season 3
03 May 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Most big breakthroughs start with a simple question. In the new season of SickKids VS, we take you behind the scenes of remarkable stories wherein eac...
VS Surgical Mortality: Making Model Hearts—to Save Real Ones
20 May 2021
Contributed by Lukas
In surgery, practice makes perfect. But for surgeons operating on tiny hearts with rare defects, that kind of experience can take decades. So, SickKid...
VS Cancer Genetics: Curing Cancer Through Gene Sequencing
13 May 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Baby Izaan was in trouble. Despite multiple rounds of chemotherapy, his tumour continued to grow, and time was running out. Izaan’s oncologist, Dr. ...
VS Food Allergy: The Promise of Low-Dose Oral Immunotherapy
06 May 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Ryan is severely allergic to peanuts. Like, hives-blossoming, throat-closing, get-me-epinephrine-now kind of allergic. But as part of a clinical trial...
VS Duchenne: Editing DNA to Cure Disease
29 Apr 2021
Contributed by Lukas
First, Gavriel’s muscles got weaker. Then, he lost the ability to walk. From there, things will only get worse. The cause is Duchenne Muscular Dystr...
VS Pandemics and Pathogens: Creating Supermolecules to Fight HIV/AIDS, Malaria, and COVID-19
22 Apr 2021
Contributed by Lukas
For years, SickKids scientist Dr. Jean-Philippe Julien toiled in his lab, harnessing the power of human antibodies to try and neutralize two of the wo...
VS Sudden Cardiac Death: Building Better Tests to Save More Lives
15 Apr 2021
Contributed by Lukas
In 1990, 20-year-old rower Heather Cartwright was at the peak of her athletic powers. But as she crossed the finish line during a race that summer, sh...
Introducing our Host: Hannah Bank
12 Apr 2021
Contributed by Lukas
As a writer for SickKids Foundation, Hannah Bank has interviewed some of the world’s best scientists and researchers. The conversations left her so ...
Trailer: Season 2
08 Apr 2021
Contributed by Lukas
3D-printed hearts to help surgeons practice. Supermolecules to stop COVID-19. Cures for aggressive, hard-to-treat cancers. And much, much more. Welcom...
VS COVID-19: Inside the Fight at SickKids
28 May 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Dr. Upton Allen, Chief of Infectious Diseases at SickKids, on how COVID-19 affects children, why scientists around the world underestimated the threat...
VS Cardiac Arrest: AI That Can See Heart Attacks Coming
21 May 2020
Contributed by Lukas
When cardiac arrest strikes, it’s dangerous, even deadly. But what if we could see it coming? What if we could turn patient data into a predictive t...
VS Cystic Fibrosis: The Rise of Individualized Medicine
14 May 2020
Contributed by Lukas
In the 1950s, most kids with cystic fibrosis died in childhood. Today, things are a lot different. One SickKids patient, Mac Robertson, isn’t just s...
VS Borders: Nurse Training in Ghana
07 May 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Ten years ago, paediatric care in Ghana was nearly non-existent. There were few paediatricians, and even fewer paediatric nurses. Because of that, chi...
VS Seizures: The Promise of Deep Brain Stimulation
30 Apr 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Andi was having 200 seizures a day. It was unbearable—for her and her family. But nothing seemed to help. Until they met Dr. George Ibrahim at SickK...
VS Hypermutant Tumours: Unleashing the Power of the Immune System
23 Apr 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Kids diagnosed with a deadly and aggressive cancer predisposition syndrome had no hope—until now. SickKids Drs. Uri Tabori and Eric Bouffet have dis...
VS Broken Hearts: Building a Machine to Keep Donor Hearts Beating Outside the Body
16 Apr 2020
Contributed by Lukas
50 kids in Canada are waitlisted for a new heart each year. Of those, 30-35 will get one, while others must keep waiting, some for years. But SickKids...
Trailer
06 Apr 2020
Contributed by Lukas
SickKids has been behind some of the biggest breakthroughs in child health. Today, we turn our sights to the next great challenges: non-stop seizures ...