Annals of emergency medicine
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Multicenter Study Observational Study
Validation of the Pediatric Appendicitis Risk Calculator (pARC) in a Community Emergency Department Setting.
The pediatric Appendicitis Risk Calculator (pARC) is a validated clinical tool for assessing a child's probability of appendicitis. Our objective was to assess the performance of the pARC in community emergency departments (EDs) and to compare its performance with that of the Pediatric Appendicitis Score (PAS). ⋯ The pARC accurately assessed appendicitis risk for children aged 5 years and older in community EDs and the pARC outperformed the PAS.
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Children with medical complexity represent a fragile population and account for the majority of patients followed in pediatric palliative care. Little is known in regard to the role of the emergency department (ED) in caring for the families of children with medical complexity. ⋯ Although perspectives differ in regard to how to provide care for pediatric palliative care patients in the ED, several barriers to providing high-quality emergency pediatric palliative care can be overcome.
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Acute flaccid myelitis is a debilitating illness characterized by acute onset of limb weakness, with one or more spinal segments displaying magnetic resonance imaging-confirmed gray matter lesions. Since the first outbreak in 2014, tracking by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has demonstrated biennial epidemics in the United States, with a current outbreak occurring in 2018. The cases of 3 children with acute flaccid myelitis who were initially thought to have common nonneurologic diagnoses are presented. Emergency physicians need to be vigilant to recognize the subtleties of acute flaccid myelitis because the illness progression is rapid and therapy is nuanced.