World journal of surgery
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World journal of surgery · Jan 2002
Randomized Controlled Trial Clinical TrialEffects of human recombinant growth hormone on donor-site healing in burned adults.
Patients suffering severe burns have an accelerated catabolism with a highly negative nitrogen balance that may worsen their prognosis. Somatropin treatment has been shown to improve this balance in different hypercatabolic situations. Moreover, in children with extensive burns it also reduces the healing time of the skin graft donor site and shortens the hospital stay. ⋯ No other adverse side effect was observed. One patient in the placebo group died as a result of sepsis and multiple organ failure. Somatropin, with the treatment regimen and dosage used in these studies, did not reduce the healing time of the skin graft donor sites or the length of hospitalization in the burn unit in adult patients with severe burns.
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World journal of surgery · Jan 2002
Comparative StudyComputed tomography for evaluation of mild to moderate pediatric trauma: are we overusing it?
Computed tomography (CT) is used liberally in the evaluation of pediatric trauma, even of low or moderate severity, because clinical examination of pediatric patients is considered unreliable. Appropriate utilization of valuable resources is essential in a cost-conscious medical era. The objective of this study is to determine if children with mild to moderate trauma are evaluated by more CT scans than adults with injuries of similar severity. ⋯ None of the pediatric patients required an operation for abnormalities identified by CT. No differences were observed in morbidity, mortality, length of hospital stay, or length of intensive care unit stay for the two groups. It was concluded that a liberal policy of CT scanning for pediatric patients with a low ISS leads to increased resource consumption with no obvious diagnostic or treatment benefit.