Jornal de pediatria
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Jornal de pediatria · May 2005
Comparative Study[Comparison of two prognostic scores (PRISM and PIM) at a pediatric intensive care unit].
To compare the performance of the PRISM (Pediatric Risk of Mortality) and the PIM (Pediatric Index of Mortality) scores at a general pediatric intensive care unit, investigating the relation between observed mortality and survival and predicted mortality and survival. ⋯ Analyzing the tests we can observe that, although the PIM test was less well calibrated overall, both PRISM and PIM offer a good capacity for discriminating between survivors and moribund patients. They are tools with comparable performance at the prognostic evaluation of the pediatric patients admitted to our unit.
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Jornal de pediatria · May 2005
[Induced sputum in children and adolescents with asthma: safety, clinical applicability and inflammatory cells aspects in stable patients and during exacerbation].
To determine the safety of sputum induction in asthmatic children and adolescents, to characterize sputum inflammatory cells while clinically stable and during exacerbation and to correlate sputum inflammatory cells with peripheral blood eosinophils, serum IgE and the degree of bronchial obstruction. ⋯ Sputum induction was found to be a safe procedure for obtaining clinical samples from children and adolescents even during exacerbations, allowing for clinical and functional limitations. The 67% induction success rate was considered satisfactory. In this group of patients, receiving inhaled corticosteroids, eosinophil quantification did not distinguish between the clinical and functional severity of asthma and was independent of the degree of airway obstruction. A proportional predominance of neutrophils was observed in the sputum of patients with asthma exacerbation.