Archives of disease in childhood
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Comparative Study
General anaesthesia or conscious sedation for painful procedures in childhood cancer: the family's perspective.
Until recently, midazolam sedation was routinely used in our institution for bone marrow aspirates and lumbar punctures in children with cancer. It has been perceived by many doctors and nurses as being well tolerated by children and their families. ⋯ This general anaesthetic regime minimised the need for restraint and was associated with low levels of pain and distress. The sedation regime, by contrast, was much less effective. There was a significant disparity between the perceptions of health professionals and those of families with respect to how children coped with painful procedures.
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To document the immunogenicity and persistence of antibody to polyribosyl-ribitol phosphate (PRP) as well as the clinical protection against invasive Haemophilus influenzae type b (Hib) disease in premature infants immunised at the routine schedule. ⋯ Premature infants develop lower antibody concentrations than term infants following Hib conjugate vaccination. Premature infants may also have an increased risk of clinical vaccine failure, but interpretation is limited by the small number of premature infants developing invasive Hib disease over eight years of national surveillance. Overall, vaccination with Hib conjugate vaccines affords a high level of protection to premature babies.
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Intensive, didactic courses teaching resuscitation training are currently not only very popular, but are also required curricula content for certain aspects of medical training. There are a number of such courses available in the field of paediatrics, each with a different emphasis and target audience. They are not inexpensive, as they utilise large amounts of training equipment and have a high instructor to student ratio. This review will examine the course structures, instructor training, the need for such courses, and effect they may have on patient outcome.
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Multicenter Study
The incidence of hypoglycaemia in children with type 1 diabetes and treated asthma.
To investigate whether treatment of coexisting asthma has any effect on the incidence of hypoglycaemia and on glycaemic control in children with type 1 diabetes. ⋯ Diabetic children with treated asthma have significantly fewer episodes of hypoglycaemia and better glycaemic control compared to children with diabetes alone. This observation needs further investigation but raises an interesting question. Do the drugs used to treat asthma, in particular beta agonists, have the therapeutic potential to reduce hypoglycaemia and facilitate an improvement in glycaemic control?