[Assessment of disease control among asthmatic adolescents].

Background: The clinical assessment of asthma control is fundamental to evaluate the results of treatment. The Asthma Control Test (ACT) is a questionnaire with five scored items, that differentiates between a well controlled or uncontrolled asthma. It has a Spanish version and has been applied in different countries.

[Usefulness of C-reactive protein for the diagnosis of bacterial infections in children. A review].

Although C-Reactive protein (CRP) was described more than 70 years ago and it still is commonly used in practice, studies exploring its usefulness persist while some propose its replacement by other inflammatory acute-phase-mediators. The aim of this clinical review is to answer the question if CRP measurement warrant clinical decisions for febrile children because it discriminates between bacterial from non bacterial etiologies. We made a systematic search by means of MEDLINE, SciELO and LILACS with the following MESH terms: "C-reactive protein", "bacterial", "infection", "children", "diagnosis" or "detection", besides the Haynes selector for articles on diagnosis, between 1950 and 2004.

[Non-invasive continuous positive airways pressure for post-extubation laryngitis in pediatric patients].

Unlabelled: Post-extubation laryngeal edema (PLE) is a common complication (10-15%) in pediatric intensive care units, and some authors have reported high failure rates for conventional treatment.

Hypothesis: Non-invasive continuous positive airways pressure (CPAP) in children with PLE may have a lower failure rate than conventional management.

Patients And Method: Twenty-five patients were needed to detect a difference between the two treatment groups.

[Manifestations of paralytic ileus in infants hospitalized for acute diarrheal syndrome].

In order to assess and characterize adynamic ileus (AI) complicating acute diarrhoea (AD) in infants, 802 consecutive admissions were studied. Diagnosis was suspected in 23 patients with abdominal distension and confirmed by radiological study in 16 whose age range was 14 ds to 6 mo. Of these late patients, 9/16 were malnourished.

[Intestinal cryptosporidiosis: a case of hospital infection].

A hospital acquired case of human cryptosporidiosis is reported in a pediatric patient with prolonged diarrhea, whose previous investigation was negative for the agent. Cryptosporidium was isolated from feces in coincidence with admission, to the same hospital room, of an additional patient with acute diarrhea in whom infection by the same agent had been demonstrated. Infant to infant transmission in hospital wards is thus a possibility.

[Cholestyramine in the treatment of refractory diarrhea of the newborn].

Eleven infants with severe protracted diarrhea were studied. All of them were treated with cholestyramine, 2 g/kg/day in three or four doses. Feces became normal in two to four days in ten out of eleven infants.