Pediatric blood & cancer
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Pediatric blood & cancer · Oct 2014
ReviewWhich decision rules meet methodological standards in children with febrile neutropenia? Results of a systematic review and analysis.
Clinical decision rules (CDRs) have sought to identify the few children with chemotherapy-induced febrile neutropenia (FN) really at risk of severe infection to reduce the invasive procedures and costs for those at low risk. Several reports have shown that most rules do not perform well enough to be clinically useful. Our objective was to analyze the derivation methods and validation procedures of these CDRs. ⋯ Only one CDR developed for children with FN met all methodological standards and reached the highest level of evidence.
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Pediatric blood & cancer · Oct 2014
Clinical TrialImpact of individualized pain plan on the emergency management of children with sickle cell disease.
Vaso-occlusive crisis (VOC) the hallmark of sickle cell disease (SCD) is often treated inadequately in the emergency department (ED). We hypothesized that pain management plans individualized for each patient can improve pain management and lead to high levels of patient satisfaction. ⋯ Individualized pain management plans in the ED are effective in delivering high quality management of VOC and are associated with a high level of patient satisfaction and decreased avoidable hospitalizations.
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Pediatric blood & cancer · Oct 2014
Development of a quality of life instrument for children with advanced cancer: the pediatric advanced care quality of life scale (PAC-QoL).
There is currently no published, validated measures available that comprehensively capture quality of life (QoL) symptoms for children with poor-prognosis malignancies. The pediatric advanced care-quality of life scale (PAC-QoL) has been developed to address this gap. The current paper describes the first two phases in the development of this measure. ⋯ The next phase of this study will be to conduct cognitive probing with the intended population to further modify and reduce candidate items prior to psychometric evaluation.