Academic emergency medicine : official journal of the Society for Academic Emergency Medicine
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This study sought to determine the prevalence, test characteristics, and severity of illness of pediatric patients with systemic inflammatory response syndrome (SIRS) vital signs among pediatric emergency department (ED) visits. ⋯ Systemic inflammatory response syndrome vital signs are common among medical pediatric patients presenting to an ED, and critical illness is rare. The majority of patients with SIRS vital signs were discharged without IV therapy and without readmission. Patients with SIRS vital signs had a statistically significant increased risk of critical care requirement, ED IV treatment, ED laboratory tests, admission, and readmission. However, SIRS vital sign criteria did not identify the majority of patients with mortality or need for critical care. SIRS vital signs had low sensitivity for critical illness, making it poorly suited for use in isolation in this setting as a test to detect children requiring sepsis resuscitation.
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The primary objective was to determine the diagnostic accuracy of a serial ultrasound (US) clinical diagnostic pathway to detect appendicitis in children presenting to the emergency department (ED). The secondary objective was to examine the diagnostic performance of the initial and interval US and to compare the accuracy of the pathway to that of the initial US. ⋯ The serial US clinical diagnostic pathway in suspected appendicitis has an acceptable diagnostic accuracy that is significantly higher than that of the initial US and results in few CT scans. This approach appears most useful in children with equivocal initial US, in whom the majority of negative cases were identified at clinical reassessment and appendicitis was diagnosed by interval US or surgical consultation in most study patients.
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The Pediatric Emergency Care Applied Research Network (PECARN) investigators previously identified risk factors associated with cervical spine injuries (CSIs) in children. Anatomic maturation and age-related variation in mechanisms of injury suggested the need to explore factors separately for younger versus older children. The purpose of this substudy was to investigate CSI risk factors in age subgroups within the PECARN study cohort. ⋯ While this analysis supports the original PECARN model for CSI, there were subtle age variations in factors associated with CSIs in children that warrant future investigation.
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Multicenter Study
Interobserver Agreement in Retrospective Chart Reviews for Factors Associated With Cervical Spine Injuries in Children.
The objective was to describe the interobserver agreement between trained chart reviewers and physician reviewers in a multicenter retrospective chart review study of children with cervical spine injuries (CSIs). ⋯ Most retrospectively assessed variables thought to be predictive of CSIs in blunt trauma-injured children had at least moderate interobserver agreement, suggesting that these data are sufficiently valid for use in identifying potential predictors of CSI.
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Kidney stones affect nearly one in 11 persons in the United States, and among those experiencing symptoms, emergency care is common. In this population, little is known about the incidence of and factors associated with repeat emergency department (ED) visits. The objective was to identify associations between potentially mutable factors and the risk of an ED revisit for patients with kidney stones in a large, all-payer cohort. ⋯ Repeat high-acuity care affects one in nine patients discharged from initial emergent evaluations for kidney stones. Access to urologic care and processes of care are associated with lower risk of repeat emergent encounters. Efforts are indicated to identify preventable causes of ED revisits for kidney stone patients and design interventions to reduce the risk of high-cost, high-acuity, repeat care.