'Short Bars Crossed' to Remodel the Entire Chest Wall in Children and Adolescents with Pectus Excavatum.

Background: The cross-bar technique of minimally invasive pectus excavatum (PE) correction remains underreported, which is especially true of pediatric patients. We therefore reviewed the experience of a Turkish and an Austrian center. An additional novelty characterizing both pediatric cohorts was the use of short bars.

Interleukin-6 serum levels predict surgical intervention in infants with necrotizing enterocolitis.

Background: Symptoms at suspicion of necrotizing enterocolitis (NEC) are often nonspecific and several biomarkers have been evaluated for their discriminative power to both diagnose and predict the course from NEC suspicion to complicated disease requiring surgical intervention. Thus, we aimed to assess the utility of interleukin-6 (IL-6) to predict surgical intervention in infants suffering from NEC and, furthermore, to discriminate infants with starting NEC or late-onset sepsis (LOS).

Methods: IL-6 serum levels at disease onset were retrospectively analyzed in 24 infants suffering from NEC as well as 16 neonates with LOS.