Pediatr Crit Care Me
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Pediatr Crit Care Me · Jan 2016
Multicenter StudyA Cross-Sectional Survey of Near-Infrared Spectroscopy Use in Pediatric Cardiac ICUs in the United Kingdom, Ireland, Italy, and Germany.
Despite the increasing use of near-infrared spectroscopy across pediatric cardiac ICUs, there is significant variability and equipoise with no universally accepted management algorithms. We aimed to explore the use of near-infrared spectroscopy in pediatric cardiac ICUs in the United Kingdom, Ireland, Italy, and Germany. ⋯ Although most responding units used near-infrared spectroscopy for high-risk patients, the majority (31/35 [88%]) did not have any protocols or guidelines for intervention. Target thresholds and intervention algorithms are needed to support the use of near-infrared spectroscopy in pediatric cardiac ICUs; an international multicenter study is warranted.
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Pediatr Crit Care Me · Jan 2016
Observational StudyProcalcitonin to Detect Suspected Bacterial Infections in the PICU.
Nonspecific clinical symptoms frequently lead to suspicion of bacterial infection in critically ill children. Clinicians send bacterial cultures for suspected infection and begin an empiric course of antibiotics while microbiology results are pending. We investigated whether the biomarker procalcitonin could be useful to predict confirmed bacterial infection in critically ill children in the PICU, before culture results are available. ⋯ Procalcitonin levels were higher in children with documented confirmed bacterial infection as compared with those with low suspicion of infection. However, neither single nor serial procalcitonin measurements were able to predict the presence or absence of confirmed bacterial infection with enough certainty to be clinically useful as to recommend initiating or withholding antibiotics.
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Pediatr Crit Care Me · Jan 2016
Transforming the Morbidity and Mortality Conference to Promote Safety and Quality in a PICU.
Determine the effectiveness of a structured systems-oriented morbidity and mortality conference in improving the process of reviewing and responding to adverse events in a PICU. ⋯ A structured systems-oriented PICU morbidity and mortality conference incorporating elements of medical incident analysis improves the process of reviewing and responding to adverse events by significantly increasing quality improvement interventions suggested and implemented. Future work would involve testing locally adapted versions of the systems-oriented morbidity and mortality conference in multiple inpatient settings.
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Severity of illness measures have long been used in pediatric critical care. The Pediatric Risk of Mortality is a physiologically based score used to quantify physiologic status, and when combined with other independent variables, it can compute expected mortality risk and expected morbidity risk. Although the physiologic ranges for the Pediatric Risk of Mortality variables have not changed, recent Pediatric Risk of Mortality data collection improvements have been made to adapt to new practice patterns, minimize bias, and reduce potential sources of error. These include changing the outcome to hospital survival/death for the first PICU admission only, shortening the data collection period and altering the Pediatric Risk of Mortality data collection period for patients admitted for "optimizing" care before cardiac surgery or interventional catheterization. This analysis incorporates those changes, assesses the potential for Pediatric Risk of Mortality physiologic variable subcategories to improve score performance, and recalibrates the Pediatric Risk of Mortality score, placing the algorithms (Pediatric Risk of Mortality IV) in the public domain. ⋯ The new Pediatric Risk of Mortality data collection methods include significant improvements that minimize the potential for bias and errors, and the new Pediatric Risk of Mortality IV algorithm for survival and death has excellent prediction performance.