Cat-scratch disease is a well-known infection in childhood. It usually presents as tender lymphadenopathy and should be included in the differential diagnosis of any lymphadenopathy syndrome. An history of exposure to cats supports the suspect and a positive serologic test to Bartonella henselae confirms the diagnosis.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground: Lower respiratory tract infections (LRTIs) and community-acquired pneumonia (CAP) are among the most frequent reasons for referrals to the pediatric emergency department (PED). The aim of this study is to describe the management of antibiotic prescription in febrile children with LRTI or CAP admitted to a third-level PED and to investigate the different variables that can guide physicians in this decision-making.
Methods: This is an observational, retrospective, monocentric study including patients < 14 years old who were presented to the PED for a febrile LRTI or CAP during the first six months of the year 2017.
Background: Bronchiolitis is the main acute lower respiratory tract infection in infants. Data regarding SARS-CoV-2-related bronchiolitis are limited.
Objective: To describe the main clinical characteristics of infants with SARS-CoV-2-related bronchiolitis in comparison with infants with bronchiolitis associated with other viruses.
Minor head trauma (MHT) is very frequent in children and post-traumatic headache (PTH) is one of its most common complications; however, its management is still a challenge. We aimed to assess the incidence and clinical characteristics of, and risk factors for, PTH among children referred to our pediatric emergency department (PED) for MHT. A total of 193 patients aged 3-14 years evaluated for MTH were enrolled and followed up for 6 months through phone calls and/or visits.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFIntroduction: Anaphylaxis is one of the most frequent and misdiagnosed emergencies in the pediatric emergency department (PED). We aimed to assess which factors play a major role for a correct diagnosis and an appropriate therapy. Methods: We reviewed the records of children discharged with a diagnosis of anaphylaxis or an allergic reaction over 11 years from 3 hospitals in the Bologna city area.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFDuring the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic, the pediatric emergency department (ED) of Bologna, Emilia-Romagna, Italy faced a reorganization to better deal with the new clinical needs. We herein describe the main changes in the organization and in the attendances to our pediatric ED. From the 1 March 2020 to the 31 January 2022, 796 children positive for SARS-CoV-2 presented to our pediatric ED, but only 26 required hospitalizations, of which only 9 for COVID-19 related reasons.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFAim: Adherence to croup management recommendations has been poorly investigated. This study aimed to describe the treatment patterns in two paediatric emergency departments and analyse the adherence to recommendations.
Methods: We conducted a retrospective chart review of children diagnosed with croup in two Italian paediatric emergency departments in 2017.
In infants and children, fever is very common in the emergency setting. The overall aim of the present publication was to overview guidance and provide an algorithm for use in the emergency setting as well as recommendations to inform parents for home care. To obtain consensus, a core steering committee drafted a management algorithm and general consensus was obtained by remote voting among experts.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFHeadache is the most frequent neurological symptom in childhood and the main reason for admission to pediatric emergency departments. The aim of this consensus document is to define a shared clinical pathway between primary care pediatricians (PCP) and hospitals for the management of children presenting with headache. For the purposes of the study, a group of hospital pediatricians and a group of PCP from the Emilia Romagna's health districts were selected to achieve consensus using the RAND/UCLA appropriateness method.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFPericardial effusion is rare in pediatric patients and is characterized by a variable clinical presentation. Mild symptoms may be present despite severe effusion. We here report the case of a patient with massive pericardial effusion with mild clinical presentation.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThe gold standard for diagnosis of SARS-CoV-2 infection has been nucleic acid amplification tests (NAAT). However, rapid antigen detection kits (Ag-RDTs), may offer advantages over NAAT in mass screening, generating results in minutes, both as laboratory-based test or point-of-care (POC) use for clinicians, at a lower cost. We assessed two different POC Ag-RDTs in mass screening versus NAAT for SARS-CoV-2 in a cohort of pediatric patients admitted to the Pediatric Emergency Unit of IRCCS-Polyclinic of Sant'Orsola, Bologna (from November 2020 to April 2021).
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThe Emilia Romagna (ER) region, Italy, in March 2020 has seen one of the largest and most serious clusters of COVID-19 in the world. In the period of 30 January to 31 May 2020, the number of paediatric emergency department presentations in Bologna, ER, decreased by 50% compared with the same period of 2019. Visits declined for every age group, with a decrease of 35%, 55% and 46% for the three age groups 0-2, 2-10 and 10-14 years, respectively.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFAim: Children and adolescents affected by somatization and somatic symptom disorder commonly refer to emergency services. Due to the absence of specific guidelines for the emergency setting and to a possible lack of knowledge, these patients are at risk of being unrecognized and mismanaged. This study aims at proposing a clinical practice to approach and manage these patients and their families in the emergency setting.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFIn the pediatric setting, management of pain in the emergency department - and even in common care - is a challenging exercise, due to the complexity of the pediatric patient, poor specific training of many physicians, and scant resources.A joint effort of several Italian societies involved in pediatrics or in pain management has led to the definition of the PIPER group and the COPPER project. By applying a modified Delphi method, the COPPER project resulted in the definition of 10 fundamental statements.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFImmunological tests, including the QuantiFERON-TB Gold In-Tube (QFT-IT) assay, represent an important aid for diagnosing active tuberculosis (TB) and latent TB infections in children, but concerns about their use in children <5 years of age persist. This is a multicenter retrospective study comparing a population of 226 children to 521 adults with pulmonary or extrapulmonary TB. The aim was to evaluate the QFT-IT performance, analyzing both qualitative and quantitative results, according to age, birthplace, and disease localization.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground: Acute mastoiditis is the main suppurative complication of acute otitis media. Its incidence ranges from 1.2 to 4.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFVitamin A is a fat-soluble micronutrient involved in the regulation of several physiologic functions, such as visual acuity, epithelial tissue integrity, immune response, and gene expression, thus playing a crucial role in childhood growth and development. Although vitamin A deficiency (VAD) in resource-limited settings is still an actual issue and represents the leading cause of preventable childhood blindness, its occurrence in high-income countries is rare, although possibly underdiagnosed because of its nonspecific early manifestations. A good awareness of VAD symptoms and risk factors could aid its early diagnosis, which is fundamental to undertake a prompt treatment and to prevent ocular complications.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground: Asthma exacerbations are a common reason for Emergency Department (ED) visits in children.
Aim: To analyze differences among age groups in terms of triggering factors and seasonality and to identify those with higher risk of severe exacerbations.
Methods: We retrospectively revised the files of children admitted for acute asthma in 2016 in our Pediatric ED.
The use of interferon gamma (IFN-γ) release assays (IGRAs) for the diagnosis of tuberculosis (TB) infection in children is still under debate because of concerns about the immature immune response in children. The aim of this study was to investigate quantitative values of the QuantiFERON-TB Gold In-Tube (QFT-IT) test, a commercially available IGRA, in a large cohort of children screened for TB infection. A retrospective analysis was conducted on samples from 517 children aged 0 to 14 years old at the Pediatric Unit of S.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFObjective: Pediatric periorbital cellulitis represents a common disease complicating a nasal infection.
Methods: A ten-year retrospective review of fifty-seven children admitted to our institution with the diagnosis of periorbital cellulitis as a complication of sinus infections was carried out.
Results: The age varied from one month to eleven years (mean 3.
Study Design: This study aimed to evaluate the diagnostic accuracy of soluble triggering receptor expressed on myeloid cells-1 (sTREM-1), midregional proatrial natriuretic peptide (MR-proANP) and midregional proadrenomedullin (MR-proADM) to distinguish bacterial from viral community-acquired pneumonia (CAP) and to identify severe cases in children hospitalized for radiologically confirmed CAP. Index test results were compared with those derived from routine diagnostic tests, i.e.
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