Strategy to Enable and Accelerate Kidney Transplant in Small Children and Results of the First 130 Transplants in Children ≤15 kg in a Single Center.

BACKGROUND: Proper care of young children in need of kidney transplant (KT) requires many skilled professionals and an expensive hospital structure. Small children have lesser access to KT. METHODS: We describe a strategy performed in Brazil to enable and accelerate KT in children ≤15 kg based on the establishment of one specialized transplant center, focused on small children, and cooperating with distant centers throughout the country. Actions on 3 fronts were implemented: (a) providing excellent medical assistance, (b) coordinating educational activities to disseminate expertise and establish a professional network, and (c) fostering research to promote scientific knowledge. We presented the number and outcomes of small children KT as a result of this strategy. RESULTS: Three hundred forty-six pediatric KTs were performed in the specialized center from 2009 to 2017, being 130 in children ≤15 kg (38%, being 41 children ≤10 kg) and 216 in >15 kg (62%). Patient survival after 1 and 5 years of the transplant was 97% and 95% in the "small children" group, whereas, in the "heavier children" group, it was 99% and 96% (P = 0.923). Regarding graft survival, we observed in the "small children" group, 91% and 87%, whereas in the "heavier children" group, 94% and 87% (P = 0.873). These results are comparable to the literature data. Groups were similar in the incidence of reoperation, vascular thrombosis, posttransplant lymphoproliferative disease, and estimated glomerular filtration rate. CONCLUSIONS: The strategy allowed an improvement in the number of KT in small children with excellent results. We believe this experience may be useful in other locations.

[The interplay between isolation and precariousness, and hospitalization duration in French Guiana]. / Calcul de l'IP-DMS en Guyane : prendre en compte le poids réel de la précarité et de l'isolement.

BACKGROUND: French Guiana faces singular health challenges: poverty, isolation, structural lag, difficulties in attracting health professionals. Hospital stays exceed the recommended durations. The present study aimed to model the impact of precariousness and geographic isolation on the hospital duration performance indicator and to recalculate the indicator after incrementing severity by 1 unit when patients were socially precarious. METHODS: Cayenne hospital data for 2017 were used to model the hospital duration performance indicator (IP-DMS) using quantile regression to study the impact of geographic and social explanatory variables. This indicator was computed hypothesizing a 1 unit increment of severity for precarious patients and by excluding patients from isolated regions. RESULTS: Most excess hospitalization days were linked to precariousness: the sojourns of precarious patients represented 47% of activity but generated 71% of excess days in hospital. Quantile regression models showed that after adjustment for potential confounders, patients from western French Guiana and Eastern French Guiana, precarious patients and the interactions terms between residence location and precariousness were significantly associated with IP-DMS increases. Recalculating the IP-DMSafter exclusion of patients from the interior and after increasing severity by 1 notch if the patient was precarious led to IP-DMS levels close to 1. CONCLUSION: The results show the nonlinear relationship between the IP-DMS and geographical isolation, poverty, and their interaction. These contextual variables must be taken into account when choosing the target IP-DMS value for French Guiana, which conditions funding and number of hospital beds allowed in a context of rapid demographic growth.

El control de la hipertensión arterial, aún sin definir / Arterial hypertension control: still without definition

RESUMEN El debate alrededor de las cifras de tensión arterial, y sobre todo las cifras a obtener mediante el tratamiento es en la actualidad un grave problema de salud. Se realizó una revisión sistemática en inglés y español de los principales artículos publicados en PubMed, Scielo y MEDLINE durante el periodo comprendido desde el año 2012 hasta 2018, acerca de la definición, evaluación y manejó de la tensión arterial. Todas las guías están de acuerdo en la toma de múltiples medidas de la tensión arterial para el diagnóstico, pero no para definir el control de la tensión, definir el control de la tensión arterial debe incluir una dimensión en el tiempo en un año por lo menos, y una proporción mínima de medidas donde debe pensar en la mitad de todas las medidas por lo menos, con medidas de tensión arterial tomadas por lo menos cada tres meses, por lo que sugerimos que un perfil anual de las cifras de tensión arterial debe ser considerado como un requisito mínimo para evaluar el control de la hipertensión arterial, este trabajo ha perfilado dos de los factores menos reconocidos: la necesidad de la intensificación del tratamiento después de la primera toma de tensión arterial por encima de las cifras deseadas, y el incremento de una nueva droga en vez de incrementar las dosis de las ya indicadas.

ABSTRACT The debate on the maintained arterial tension measure, and on the measure to obtain through the long term treatment, is currently a problem for the medical practitioner, due to the variation of arterial tension during the day at different hours because of the patients circadian cycle, and due to variations in different days according to the proper patient's situations or the environment around it, and the different seasons of the year. They make it difficult to know when arterial tension is within the parameters accepted as "controlled". The authors carried out a systematic review of documents published in PubMed, Scielo and MEDLINE in the period 2012-2018, both in English and Spanish, on the arterial tension definition, evaluation and management. The guidelines agree in taking arterial tension measures in different moments for the diagnosis, but not in defining tension control. Defining tension control should include a time dimension of at least a year, and a minimal proportion of measures within the parameters recognized as non-pathological or optimal on the basis of measures taken at least every three months. Therefore, the authors suggest that an annual profile of the arterial tension parameters should be considered as a minimal requirement to evaluate arterial hypertension control.

Exclusive bed for thrombolysis. A simple measure that allows 85% of ischemic stroke patients to be treated in the first hour.

The door-to-needle time is an important goal to reduce the time to treatment in intravenous thrombolysis. Objective Analyze if the inclusion of an exclusive thrombolytic bed reduces the door-to-needle time. Method One hundred and fifty patients admitted for neurological evaluation with ischemic stroke were separated in two groups: in the first, patients were admitted in the Emergency Room for intravenous thrombolysis (ER Group); in the second, patients were admitted in an exclusive thrombolytic bed in the general neurology ward (TB Group). Results Sixty-eight (86.0%) patients from TB Group were treated in the first 60 minutes of arrival as compared to 48 (67.6%) in the ER Group (p = 0.011). Conclusion The introduction of a thrombolytic bed in a general hospital setting can markedly reduce the door-to-needle time, allowing more than 85% of patients to be treated within the first hour of admission.