Effects of a Paediatric Antimicrobial Stewardship Program on Antimicrobial Use and Quality of Prescriptions in Patients with Appendix-Related Intraabdominal Infections.

The effectiveness of antimicrobial stewardship programs (ASP) in reducing antimicrobial use (AU) in children has been proved. Many interventions have been described suitable for different institution sizes, priorities, and patients, with surgical wards being one of the areas that may benefit the most. We aimed to describe the results on AU and length of stay (LOS) in a pre-post study during the three years before (2014-2016) and the three years after (2017-2019) implementation of an ASP based on postprescription review with feedback in children and adolescents admitted for appendix-related intraabdominal infections (AR-IAI) in a European Referral Paediatric University Hospital.

Benefits of a Pediatric Antimicrobial Stewardship Program in Antimicrobial Use and Quality of Prescriptions in a Referral Children's Hospital.

Objectives: To evaluate the results of the first 24 months of a postprescription review with feedback-based antimicrobial stewardship program in a European referral children's hospital.

Study Design: We performed a pre-post study comparing antimicrobial use between the control (2015-2016) and the intervention periods (2017-2018) expressed in days of therapy/100 days present. Quality of prescriptions was evaluated by quarterly cross-sectional point-prevalence surveys.

Clinical rating scale for pantothenate kinase-associated neurodegeneration: A pilot study.

Background: Pantothenate kinase-associated neurodegeneration is a progressive neurological disorder occurring in both childhood and adulthood. The objective of this study was to design and pilot-test a disease-specific clinical rating scale for the assessment of patients with pantothenate kinase-associated neurodegeneration.

Methods: In this international cross-sectional study, patients were examined at the referral centers following a standardized protocol.

Effectiveness of calretinin and role of age in the diagnosis of Hirschsprung disease.

Objective: Gold standard in Hirschsprung disease (HD) diagnosis is rectal suction biopsy (RSB) with hematoxylin and eosin and acetylcholinesterase (ACE) stainings. Sensitivity is 83-93 % and specificity is between 95 and 99 %. The rate of non-conclusive results (NC) due to inadequate samples or variability in the interpretation is about 11-37.