Current treatment options in pediatrics
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Curr Treat Options Pediatr · Mar 2015
Targeted Temperature Management in Pediatric Central Nervous System Disease.
Acute central nervous system conditions due to hypoxic-ischemic encephalopathy, traumatic brain injury (TBI), status epilepticus, and central nervous system infection/inflammation, are a leading cause of death and disability in childhood. There is a critical need for effective neuroprotective therapies to improve outcome targeting distinct disease pathology. ⋯ Prospective clinical evidence for its neuroprotective efficacy exists in narrowly-defined populations with hypoxic-ischemic injury outside of the pediatric age range while trials comparing hypothermia to normothermia after TBI have failed to demonstrate a benefit on outcome but consistently demonstrate potential use in decreasing refractory intracranial pressure. Data in children from prospective, randomized controlled trials using different strategies of targeted temperature management for various outcomes are few but a large study examining HT versus controlled normothermia to improve neurological outcome in cardiac arrest is underway.