Off-Hours Admissions and Mortality in PICU Without 24-Hour Onsite Intensivist Coverage.

OBJECTIVE: To evaluate whether the off-hours admission has any effect on risk-adjusted mortality and length of stay for nonelective patients admitted to a pediatric intensive care unit (PICU) without 24-hour in-house intensivist coverage. DESIGN: Prospective cohort study. SETTING: A 34-bed tertiary PICU. PATIENTS: All consecutive nonelective patients aged 0 to 14 years admitted from January 2012 to June 2015. MEASUREMENTS AND MAIN RESULTS: A total of 1254 patients were nonelectively admitted to the PICU. They were categorized according to time of PICU admission as either office hours (07:30 to 16:30 from Sunday to Thursday and whenever an intensivist is present in the ICU) or off-hours (16:30 to 07:30, Friday and Saturday and public holidays). Standardized mortality rates (SMRs) of patients admitted during off-hours were compared to SMRs of patients admitted during office hours using Pediatric Risk of Mortality (PRISM2) score. Multivariate logistic regression was used to assess the effect of time of admission on outcome after adjustment for severity of illness using the PRISM2. The mortality observed in the office-hours group was 9.4% and in the off-hours group was 8.1%. The PRISM2-based SMR was 0.83 (95% confidence interval [CI]: 0.43-1.47) for the office-hours group and 0.68 (95% CI: 0.34-1.36) for the off-hours group. No significant differences in length of ICU stay or duration of mechanical ventilation were observed between patients admitted during off-hours and those admitted during office hours. In the logistic regression model, off-hours admission was not significantly associated with a higher mortality (odds ratio: 0.85, 95% CI: 0.57-1.27; P = .44). CONCLUSIONS: The absence of an in-house intensivist during off-hours is not associated with an increase in mortality, length of ICU stay, or duration of mechanical ventilation for patients admitted to our pediatric ICU.

Shock: an unusual presentation of Kawasaki disease.

UNLABELLED: Kawasaki disease (KD) is a common acute systemic vasculitis of childhood. Although KD has wide spectrum of clinical features, shock is not one of its common presentation form. We describe a 5-month-old female infant with severe shock syndrome requiring fluid resuscitation, inotropic support, and PICU admission. She was diagnosed retrospectively to have KD complicated by coronary artery aneurysms in spite of receiving early course of IV immunoglobulin. CONCLUSION: Diagnosis of KD could be missed in the pediatric intensive care unit because of its atypical presentation and the wide array of associated clinical symptoms. Subsequently, intensivists and emergency room physicians should maintain a high index of suspicion not to miss it or diagnose it at an advanced stage of the illness.