Archives de pédiatrie : organe officiel de la Sociéte française de pédiatrie
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Observational Study
[Can a simple lung ultrasound score predict length of ventilation for infants with severe acute viral bronchiolitis?]
Lung ultrasound (LU) is a bedside point-of-care technique in critical care and emergency medicine. LU is quick and non-irradiating, and provides accurate diagnostic information when compared with chest radiographs. Specific LU signs have been described for bronchiolitis. This study aimed to evaluate the correlation between severity of LU-diagnosed lung lesions, using a quantitative LU score, and the length of non-invasive ventilation (LOV) for infants diagnosed with severe viral bronchiolitis. ⋯ This is the first study to evaluate the use of LU in infants needing PICU admission for severe acute bronchiolitis. The LU score does not correlate with LOV, mWCAS, LOS, or length of stay, but the number of pathological intercostal spaces on the right side correlates significantly with LOS. Although LU scores have been validated for the newborn and the adult, this has been in the setting of restrictive lung diseases. Bronchiolitis is a predominantly obstructive lung disease and this may explain the lack of performance observed.
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Review Case Reports
[Perineal groove: Case report and review of the literature].
Perineal groove is a rare anoperineal congenital malformation, usually occurring in girls, unknown to many pediatricians. We report the case of a 17-day-old girl admitted for urinary infection, who presented a wet sulcus with mucous membrane, extending from the vaginal fourchette to the anterior border of the anus. ⋯ This benign malformation tends to be self-epithelialized in the 1st year of life, and no surgical treatment is recommended, except for cosmetic reasons or for recurrent infections. This diagnosis must be known so as to avoid unnecessary explorations and anxiogenic misdiagnosis.
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Multicenter Study
[A survey on premedication prior to intubation in very preterm infants (28-32WG) with respiratory distress syndrome in French neonatal intensive care units].
Tracheal intubation is a painful procedure for which the routine use of analgesia is recommended. However, the use of premedication for intubation is not yet generalized and there is great diversity in the drugs used. The main objective of this study was to describe the frequency of premedication use in preterm neonates aged between 28 and 32weeks of gestation, intubated for respiratory distress syndrome. Secondary objectives were to describe the existence of a written protocol, its influence on the frequency of premedication and the drugs used. ⋯ Improvements in practices and increased knowledge are required to generalize the sedation/analgesia practices for tracheal intubation in neonatal intensive care units in France.
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In the last 20years, culture-independent DNA-based techniques ("shotgun sequencing") demonstrated that complex microbial communities reside on most epithelial surfaces, including the lower airways. Until the amniotic sac ruptures, a fetus is considered to be essentially sterile. Many factors affect the composition of the lung microbiota: inheritance, mode of delivery, diet, and age-related changes in adults. ⋯ Animal models show that these interactions play a role in innate pulmonary immunity and modulation of the inflammatory response. The microbial composition of the airway microbiota differs between healthy children and those with chronic lung disease. The advances in the comprehension of microbiome changes have resulted in new approaches concerning the microbiota for treatment and prevention of disease.
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Though benign in the majority of cases, sleepwalking sometimes causes injuries due, among other causes, to falls. Such accidents can be life-threatening - a situation that has been termed Elpenor syndrome (in reference to an accident experienced by a character in Homer's epic The Odyssey) - in particular when entailing defenestration. This syndrome has been described in adults and adolescents; we report here a case in a child.