Journal of the American College of Surgeons
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Many professional organizations help their members identify and use quality guidelines. Some of these efforts involve developing new guidelines, and others assess existing guidelines for their clinical usefulness. The American College of Surgeons Guidelines Program attempts to recognize useful surgical guidelines and develop research questions to help clarify existing clinical guidelines. We used existing guidelines about central venous access to develop a set of summary recommendations that could be used by practitioners to establish local best practices. ⋯ Our process combined assessing existing guidelines methodology with expert opinion to produce a best practice list of guidelines that could be fashioned into local care routines by practicing physicians. The American College of Surgeons guidelines program believes this process will help validate the clinical utility of existing guidelines and identify areas needing further investigation to determine practical validity.
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Multicenter Study
Patterns and outcomes of pediatric facial fractures in the United States: a survey of the National Trauma Data Bank.
Pediatric trauma involving the bones of the face is associated with severe injury and disability. Although much is known about the epidemiology of facial fractures in adults, little is known about national injury patterns and outcomes in children in the US. ⋯ Causes and patterns of facial fractures vary with age. Cranial and central facial injuries are more common among toddlers and infants, and mandible injuries are more common among adolescents. Although bony craniofacial trauma is relatively uncommon among the pediatric population, it remains a substantial source of mortality, morbidity, and hospital resource use. Continued efforts toward injury prevention are warranted.