Archives of disease in childhood
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To evaluate the discriminative ability of the Manchester triage system (MTS) to identify serious bacterial infections (SBIs) in children with fever in the emergency department (ED) and to study the association between predictors of SBI and discriminators of MTS urgency of care. ⋯ The MTS has poor discriminative ability to predict the presence of SBIs in children presenting with fever to the paediatric ED. Important predictors of SBI are represented within the MTS, but are used in a different way to classify urgency.
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Acute severe asthma in children is a common cause of admission to intensive care units (ICU), but there are few reports on long-term outcomes. This study describes outcomes for children with asthma admitted to an ICU. ⋯ Admission to the ICU for asthma is a predictor of hospital readmission. Those with persistent asthma or requiring ventilation are at significant risk of mortality in subsequent years and require close follow-up.
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Multicenter Study Comparative Study Controlled Clinical Trial
A community intervention trial to evaluate emergency care practitioners in the management of children.
To evaluate the impact of emergency care practitioners (ECPs) on the patient care pathway for children presenting with minor conditions in unscheduled care settings. ⋯ ECPs are not as effective as usual health providers in discharging children after assessment of urgent healthcare problems. This has implications for the workload of other paediatric providers such as the emergency department. ECPs may be better targeted to settings and patients groups in which there is more evidence of their effectiveness in patient care pathways.