Should We Pay Attention to the Delay Before Admission to a Pediatric Intensive Care Unit for Children With Cancer? Impact on 1-Month Mortality. A Report From the French Children's Oncology Study Group, GOCE.

Acute complications requiring admission to pediatric intensive care unit (PICU) are frequent for children with cancer. Our objective was to determine early prognostic factors of mortality in a cohort of children with cancer hospitalized in PICU for acute complications and particularly to assess whether the delay before admission to a PICU is an early predictor of mortality. We conduct a retrospective multicenter analysis. All patients transferred in PICU for acute complications between January 2002 and December 2012 were included. One-month mortality of the 224 patients analyzed was 24.5%. Delay before PICU admission was a significant prognostic factor of 1-month mortality with nonsurvivors experiencing a longer median delay than survivors (24 vs. 12 h, respectively, P<0.05). Time from diagnosis to PICU admission (P<0.001), hematopoietic stem cell transplant (P<0.05), the duration of neutropenia (P<0.01), infection type (P<0.001), number of organ dysfunctions (P<0.001), and reaching any grade 4 toxicity before PICU admission (P<0.001) also affected mortality rate at 1-month post-PICU discharge. In the multivariate analysis, only reaching any grade 4 toxicity before PICU admission influenced 1-month mortality (odds ratio, 2.30; 95% confidence interval, 1.07-4.96; P<0.05). These results suggest that PICU admission before severe impairment leads to a better outcome for children with cancer.