[Latent safety threats in a pediatric emergency department: Using in situ simulation to test a new trauma room concept]. / Latente Sicherheitsmängel in einer pädiatrischen Notaufnahme: Testung eines neuen Schockraumkonzepts mithilfe von In-situ-Simulation.

INTRODUCTION: Structured emergency room concepts have been shown to contribute to patient safety. Until now there has been no uniform emergency room concept for critically ill and seriously injured children and adolescents in the emergency room at the Altona Children's Hospital in Hamburg. This concept has been newly developed in interdisciplinary cooperation and includes the use of new clinical premises as well as new responsibilities and team compositions. The introduction of new processes and rooms for handling emergencies is associated with a risk of overlooking latent safety deficiencies or detecting them only after the process has been implemented. This may have a direct impact on patient safety. Before moving to new clinical premises, in situ simulation can be helpful to identify and to resolve latent safety threats in advance. Therefore, this method was chosen to test the newly created emergency room concept in the future emergency room at the Altona Children's Hospital. METHODS: Two in situ simulations were carried out in the future real emergency room. Latent safety threats detected by the observation team and the participants (medical and nursing staff of the Altona Children's Hospital from the departments of pediatric surgery, traumatology, orthopedics, pediatrics, anesthesia, intensive care medicine, radiology, emergency medicine) were collected using free text notes after the simulations and evaluated retrospectively. In order to better deal with these latent safety threats, the observations were classified into different categories: working environment (e.g., lack of equipment, unfavorable positioning of material), process (e.g., lack of defined responsibilities in the team) and other safety threats that did not fall into one of the two categories defined. RESULTS: A total of 51 latent safety threats were identified during the two in situ simulations. Of these, 22 (43.1%) were assigned to the "working environment" category, 20 (39.2%) to the "process" category and 9 (17.7%) to the "other safety threats" category. Of the latent safety threats identified, 46 (90.2 %) could be resolved before the emergency room was put into operation. For the non-recoverable safety threats, safety concepts were developed in order to further minimize the risk of patient hazard. DISCUSSION: With the help of this study, it could be shown that the implementation of in situ simulation before the commissioning of new clinical premises and the introduction of new processes can contribute to the detection of latent safety threats in an interdisciplinary German pediatric emergency department.

Iatrogenic severe hyperglycemia due to parenteral administration of glucose in children - a case series.

BACKGROUND: Iatrogenic severe hyperglycemia (ISH) caused by glucose-containing i.v. solution is a potentially fatal treatment error. The objective of this study was to investigate the causes, circumstances, course of disease, and complications of ISH > 300 mg/dl (16.7 mmol/l) in neonates and children. METHODS: We emailed a survey to 105 neonatal and pediatric intensive care units in Germany, Austria, and Switzerland, asking to retrospectively report cases of ISH. RESULTS: We received 11 reports about premature infants to children. Four patients (36%) had poor outcome: 2 died and 2 suffered persistent sequelae. The highest observed blood glucose was at median 983 mg/dl (54.6 mmol/l) (range 594-2240 mg/dl; 33.0-124.3 mmol/l) and median time to normoglycemia was 7 h (range 2-23). Blood glucose was higher and time to normoglycemia longer in patients with poor outcome. Invasive therapy was required in 73% (mechanical ventilation) and 50% (vasopressor therapy) of patients, respectively. Administration of insulin did not differ between outcome groups. Patients with poor outcome showed coma (100% vs. 40%) and seizures (75% vs. 29%) more frequently than those with good outcome. CONCLUSIONS: ISH is a severe condition with high morbidity and mortality. Further research to amplify the understanding of this condition is needed, but focus should largely be held on its prevention.

The BCL2-938 C > A promoter polymorphism is associated with risk group classification in children with acute lymphoblastic leukemia.

BACKGROUND: Acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL) is the most common pediatric cancer. While current treatment regimens achieve almost 80% overall survival, long-term side effects of chemotherapeutic agents can be severe. The functional BCL2-938C > A promoter polymorphism is known to influence the balance between survival and apoptosis of malignant hematolymphoid cells. We investigated its usefulness as a marker for treatment stratification for children with ALL. METHODS: We analyzed DNA from 182 children suffering from ALL in this study to determine genotypes of the -938 C > A polymorphism by "slow-down" PCR. RESULTS: ALL patients with the BCL2-938CC genotype had an approximately 3-fold higher risk of belonging to a high-risk group. Within the high-risk group, 50% of BCL2-938CC patients were classified as high-risk due to poor prednisone response whereas only 33% of patients with AC and AA genotypes were classified as high-risk for the same reason. CONCLUSIONS: Our results suggest that BCL2-938C > A genotyping may be beneficial for therapy response prediction in ALL patients, and warrant examination in a larger cohort to validate its usefulness for treatment stratification of pediatric ALL patients.