Pediatric emergency medicine practice
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Pediatr Emerg Med Pract · Jul 2019
ReviewDiagnostic point-of-care ultrasound: assessment techniques for the pediatric trauma patient
Emergency ultrasound is performed at the point of care to quickly answer focused clinical questions. Over the last 25 years, the use of this technique has expanded rapidly. ⋯ Utilizing diagnostic point-of-care ultrasound for pediatric trauma patients in the emergency department can facilitate diagnosis at the bedside rather than sending the patient out of the department for another study. This supplement focuses on some of the common indications for diagnostic POCUS that may be useful in the setting of trauma, as found in the pediatric literature, or extrapolated from adult literature where pediatric evidence is scarce.
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Pediatr Emerg Med Pract · Jul 2019
ReviewEvaluation and management of the febrile young infant in the emergency department
Among young infants presenting with fever, untreated serious bacterial infections can have severe outcomes, so a full sepsis workup is often recommended but may not be necessary. This issue reviews the use of novel diagnostic tools such as procalcitonin, C-reactive protein, and RNA biosignatures as well as new risk stratification tools such as the Step-by-Step approach and the Pediatric Emergency Care Applied Research Network prediction rule to determine which febrile young infants require a full sepsis workup and to guide the management of these patients in the emergency department. The most recent literature assessing the risk of concomitant bacterial meningitis with urinary tract infections and the role for viral testing, specifically herpes simplex virus and enterovirus, are also reviewed.