Targeted interventions improve shared agreement of daily goals in the pediatric intensive care unit.

Objective: To improve communication during daily rounds using sequential interventions.

Design: Prospective cohort study.

Setting: Multidisciplinary pediatric intensive care unit in a university hospital.

End-tidal and arterial carbon dioxide measurements correlate across all levels of physiologic dead space.

Background: End-tidal carbon dioxide (P(ETCO(2))) is a surrogate, noninvasive measurement of arterial carbon dioxide (P(aCO(2))), but the clinical applicability of P(ETCO(2)) in the intensive care unit remains unclear. Available research on the relationship between P(ETCO(2)) and P(aCO(2)) has not taken a detailed assessment of physiologic dead space into consideration. We hypothesized that P(ETCO(2)) would reliably predict P(aCO(2)) across all levels of physiologic dead space, provided that the expected P(ETCO(2))-P(aCO(2)) difference is considered.

Probiotic administration and the incidence of nosocomial infection in pediatric intensive care: a randomized placebo-controlled trial.

Objective: To evaluate the efficacy of probiotics in reducing the rates of nosocomial infection in pediatric intensive care.

Design: Randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled trial.

Setting: A 16-bed pediatric intensive care unit in a university-affiliated children's hospital.

Inhaled nitric oxide results in deteriorating hemodynamics when administered during cardiopulmonary bypass in neonatal swine.

Objective: To evaluate if inhaled nitric oxide (iNO) has a lung-protective effect when it is delivered during the ischemic phase of neonatal cardiopulmonary bypass (CPB).

Design: Prospective, randomized, controlled study.

Setting: Surgical research laboratory in a university hospital.

Effects of maternal nicotine exposure on branching morphogenesis of mouse fetal lung: in vivo and in vitro studies.

Epidemiological evidence suggests that premature infants born to mothers who smoke have a lower incidence of neonatal respiratory distress syndrome. The mechanism has been proposed to be due to increased lung maturity. This in vivo study investigated the effect of maternal nicotine on lung development by evaluating the airway branching morphogenesis (ABM) in mice fetuses.