JAMA pediatrics
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Observational Study
Pediatric intensive care unit mortality among Latino children before and after a multilevel health care delivery intervention.
Research on health equity has focused on documenting health care disparities or understanding factors leading to disparities, but limited efforts have focused on reducing health care disparities in children. Latino children have increased prevalence of acute and chronic conditions; they have limited access and other barriers to high-quality health care, including intensive care. ⋯ Latino children had higher odds of mortality, even after controlling for age, sex, severity of illness, insurance status, and other covariates. These differences disappeared after culturally and linguistically sensitive interventions at multiple levels. Local multilevel interventions can reduce the effect of health care inequities on clinical outcomes, without requiring major changes in health care policy.
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In rural India, as in many developing countries, childhood mortality remains high and the quality of health care available is low. Improving care in such settings, where most health care practitioners do not have formal training, requires an assessment of the practitioners' knowledge of appropriate care and the actual care delivered (the know-do gap). ⋯ Practitioners performed poorly with vignettes and SPs, with large know-do gaps, especially for childhood diarrhea. Efforts to improve health care for major causes of childhood mortality should emphasize strategies that encourage pediatric health care practitioners to diagnose and manage these conditions correctly through better monitoring and incentives in addition to practitioner training initiatives.
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Infection with the respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) is the leading cause of hospitalizations in children, accounting for more than 90,000 hospitalizations every year in the United States. For children who are at risk for severe RSV infections, the American Academy of Pediatrics recommends immunoprophylaxis with a series of up to 5 injections of the antibody palivizumab administered monthly, beginning on November 1 of each year. However, many practitioners initiate injections at the onset of RSV season as indicated by local surveillance. ⋯ Modified palivizumab regimens can improve protection for children at risk for severe outcomes of RSV infection and thereby lower rates of hospitalization due to RSV.
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Review Meta Analysis
Oxygen saturation target range for extremely preterm infants: a systematic review and meta-analysis.
The optimal oxygen saturation (SpO2) target for extremely preterm infants is unknown. ⋯ Although infants cared for with a liberal oxygen target had significantly lower mortality before hospital discharge than infants cared for with a restricted oxygen target, the quality of evidence for this estimate of effect is low. Necrotizing enterocolitis occurred less frequently in the liberal oxygen group. We found no significant differences in death or disability at 24 months, bronchopulmonary dysplasia, retinopathy of prematurity, neurodevelopmental outcomes, or hearing loss at 24 months.