• Am. J. Crit. Care · Sep 2023

    Associations Between Core Temperature Disorders and Outcomes of Pediatric Intensive Care Unit Patients.

    • Panagiotis Kiekkas, Grigorios Kourtis, Paraskevi Feizidou, Michael Igoumenidis, Eleni Almpani, and Anastasios Tzenalis.
    • Panagiotis Kiekkas is a professor in the Nursing Department, University of Patras, Greece.
    • Am. J. Crit. Care. 2023 Sep 1; 32 (5): 338345338-345.

    BackgroundThe few studies of associations between fever and outcomes in pediatric intensive care unit (PICU) patients have conflicting findings. Associations between hypothermia and patient outcomes have not been studied.ObjectiveTo investigate the incidence and characteristics of fever and hypothermia and their associations with adverse outcomes among PICU patients.MethodsPatients consecutively admitted to 2 PICUs in a 2-year period were prospectively studied. Core temperature was mainly measured by rectal or axillary thermometry. Fever and hypothermia were defined as core temperatures of greater than 38.0 °C and less than 36.0 °C, respectively. Prolonged mechanical ventilation, prolonged PICU stay, and PICU mortality were the adverse patient outcomes studied. Associations between patient outcomes and core temperature disorders were evaluated with univariate comparisons and multivariate analyses.ResultsOf 545 patients enrolled, fever occurred in 299 (54.9%) and hypothermia occurred in 161 (29.5%). Both temperature disorders were independently associated with prolonged mechanical ventilation and prolonged PICU stay (P < .001) but not with PICU mortality. Late onset of fever (P < .001) and hypothermia (P = .009) were independently associated with prolonged mechanical ventilation, fever magnitude and duration (both P < .001) were independently associated with prolonged PICU stay, and fever magnitude (P < .001) and infectious cause of hypothermia (P= .01) were independently associated with higher PICU mortality.ConclusionsThese findings provide evidence that the manifestation and characteristics of fever and hypothermia are independent predictors of adverse outcomes in PICU patients.©2023 American Association of Critical-Care Nurses.

      Pubmed     Copy Citation     Plaintext  

      Add institutional full text...

    Notes

     
    Knowledge, pearl, summary or comment to share?
    300 characters remaining
    help        
    You can also include formatting, links, images and footnotes in your notes
    • Simple formatting can be added to notes, such as *italics*, _underline_ or **bold**.
    • Superscript can be denoted by <sup>text</sup> and subscript <sub>text</sub>.
    • Numbered or bulleted lists can be created using either numbered lines 1. 2. 3., hyphens - or asterisks *.
    • Links can be included with: [my link to pubmed](http://pubmed.com)
    • Images can be included with: ![alt text](https://bestmedicaljournal.com/study_graph.jpg "Image Title Text")
    • For footnotes use [^1](This is a footnote.) inline.
    • Or use an inline reference [^1] to refer to a longer footnote elseweher in the document [^1]: This is a long footnote..

    hide…