Evaluation of pediatric patients with COVID-19 in a Turkish university hospital.

Background: Although COVID-19 has a milder course in pediatric patients than in adults, it can have a severe and fatal course in children with an underlying disease (UD). Aims: In this study, we aimed to evaluate the demographic, clinical, laboratory, and radiological characteristics, treatment methods, and prognosis of pediatric patients diagnosed with COVID-19. Patients and Methods: The files of patients aged 0-18 years diagnosed with COVID-19 were retrospectively evaluated. Clinically and radiologically suspicious cases were accepted as confirmed cases if SARS-CoV-2 PCR positivity was found in nasopharyngeal swab samples. The severity of the disease was defined as asymptomatic, mild, moderate, and severe according to clinical, laboratory, and radiological features. Results: A total of 322 pediatric patients, 51.2% male and 48.8% female, were included in the study. The median age of the patients was 12.08 years (1 month-18 years). Of the 322 patients, 81 (25.1%) were asymptomatic. Disease severity was as follows: 218 were (67.7%) mild, 14 were (4.3%) moderate, and 9 (2.7%) were severe. 35.7% of the patients were hospitalized. Six percent were admitted to the intensive care unit, and three (0.93%) patients died. The mortality rate in patients with the UD was 3.3%. Conclusion: In our study, we determined that the disease had a more severe course in patients with initial procalcitonin, D-dimer, troponin increase, and thrombocytopenia. Although COVID-19 has a mild course in children, this is unfortunately not true for children with an UD.

A rare complication of pica: Stone aspiration with severe respiratory distress.

Tracheobronchial foreign body aspiration (FBA), a common pediatric presentation to emergency departments, is still a public healthcare problem affecting children all over the world. There are several types of foreign bodies reported from different parts of the world, including both organic or nonorganic substances. Pica, another interesting clinical entity, is characterized by persistent eating of nonnutritive substances, which is inappropriate for the maturation stage of the individual. A 3-year-old pediatric patient was admitted to our emergency department with a 3-day history of coughing and new onset respiratory distress. A chest X-ray was performed and it showed a suspicious radiopaque foreign body in the localization of left bronchi. Urgent rigid bronchoscopy was performed. The foreign body in the left main bronchi was, surprisingly, a 0.5-1 cm diameter, irregularly shaped stone particle. The laboratory evaluations and patient history revealed the diagnosis of severe iron deficiency anemia and accompanying pica. Stone aspiration, as an FBA, is a rare but potentially life-threatening complication of pica. Iron deficiency anemia accompanied by pica should be diagnosed and treated in the early stage of the disease because of their complications. According to our knowledge and literature search, this is the first case of stone aspiration as a complication of severe iron deficiency anemia and pica.

Impact of a multidimensional infection control strategy on central line-associated bloodstream infection rates in pediatric intensive care units of five developing countries: findings of the International Nosocomial Infection Control Consortium (INICC).

PURPOSE: To analyze the impact of the International Nosocomial Infection Control Consortium (INICC) multidimensional infection control strategy including a practice bundle to reduce the rates of central line-associated bloodstream infection (CLAB) in patients hospitalized in pediatric intensive care units (PICUs) of hospitals, which are members of the INICC, from nine cities of five developing countries: Colombia, India, Mexico, Philippines, and Turkey. METHODS: CLAB rates were determined by means of a prospective surveillance study conducted on 1,986 patients hospitalized in nine PICUs, over a period of 12,774 bed-days. The study was divided into two phases. During Phase 1 (baseline period), active surveillance was performed without the implementation of the multi-faceted approach. CLAB rates obtained in Phase 1 were compared with CLAB rates obtained in Phase 2 (intervention period), after implementation of the INICC multidimensional infection control program. RESULTS: During Phase 1, 1,029 central line (CL) days were recorded, and during Phase 2, after implementing the CL care bundle and interventions, we recorded 3,861 CL days. The CLAB rate was 10.7 per 1,000 CL days in Phase 1, and in Phase 2, the CLAB rate decreased to 5.2 per 1,000 CL days (relative risk [RR] 0.48, 95% confidence interval [CI] 0.29-0.94, P = 0.02), showing a reduction of 52% in the CLAB rate. CONCLUSIONS: This study shows that the implementation of a multidimensional infection control strategy was associated with a significant reduction in the CLAB rates in the PICUs of developing countries.

Performance and analysis of four pediatric mortality prediction scores among critically ill children: A multicenter prospective observational study in four PICUs.

OBJECTIVE: We aimed to evaluate and compare the prognostic performance of common pediatric mortality scoring systems (the Pediatric Index of Mortality 2 [PIM2], PIM3, Pediatric Risk of Mortality [PRISM], and PRISM4 scores) to determine which is the most applicable score in our pediatric study cohort. METHODS: This prospective observational multicenter cohort study was conducted in four tertiary-care pediatric intensive care units (PICUs) in Turkey. All children, between 1 month and 16 years old, admitted to the participating PICUs between October 1, 2019, and March 31, 2020, were included in the study. Discrimination between death and survival was assessed by area under the receiver operating characteristic plot (AUC) for each model. The Hosmer-Lemeshow goodness-of-fit (GOF) test was used to assess the calibration of the models, RESULTS: A total of 570 patients (median age 35 months) were enrolled in the study. The observed mortality rate was 8.2% (47/570). The standardized mortality ratio (SMR) of PIM2, PIM3, PRISM, and PRISM4 with 95% confidence interval (CI) were 0.94 (0.68-1.23), 1.27 (0.93-1.68), 0.86 (0.63-1.13), and 1.5 (1.10-1.97), respectively. The AUC with 95% CI was 0.934 (0.91-0.96) for PIM2, 0.934 (0.91-0.96) for PIM3, 0.917 (0.88-0.95) for PRISM, and 0.926 (0.88-0.97) for PRISM4 models. The Hosmer-Lemeshow test showed that the difference between observed and predicted mortality by PIM3 (p = 0.003) and PRISM4 (p = 0.008) was statistically significant whereas PIM2 (p = 0.28) and PRISM (p = 0.62) showed good calibration. CONCLUSION: The overall performance of (both discrimination and calibration) PRISM and PIM2 scoring systems in Turkish pediatric patients aged 1 month to 16 years was accurate and had the best fit for risk groups according to our study. Although PIM3 and PRISM4 have good discriminatory power, their calibration was very poor in our study cohort.

Surfactant therapy in acute respiratory distress syndrome due to hydrocarbon aspiration.

Hydrocarbon aspiration causes acute lung injury, which may lead to acute respiratory distress syndrome. Surfactant has been shown to be beneficial in experimentally-induced hydrocarbon-associated acute respiratory distress syndrome. However, there has not been a clinical study evaluating the effect of surfactant application on hydrocarbon aspiration in humans. We report a 17-month-old boy with acute respiratory distress syndrome due to hydrocarbon aspiration and was successfully treated with surfactant application.