Publications by authors named "Kathleen Meert"

Article Synopsis
  • Viral lower respiratory tract infection (vLRTI) significantly impacts global child health, prompting research into the host immune responses using proteomics for better understanding and diagnosis.
  • The study analyzed 1,305 proteins from tracheal aspirate and plasma of 62 critically ill children, finding 200 differentially expressed proteins that reveal key immune responses, with a robust nine-protein TA classifier showing high diagnostic accuracy (AUC of 0.96).
  • It also highlighted the limited correlation between tracheal aspirate and plasma proteins and examined how viral load and bacterial co-infections influence immune signaling pathways.
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Article Synopsis
  • Viral lower respiratory tract infection (vLRTI) is a major cause of pediatric hospitalization and mortality globally, yet the immune responses involved are not well understood.
  • A study analyzed over 1,300 proteins in tracheal aspirate and plasma from critically ill children, identifying significant protein changes linked to vLRTI and developing a diagnostic tool with high accuracy.
  • Key findings included increased interferon and T cell responses in the lower airway, distinct protein profiles in plasma, and novel protein biomarkers that could enhance diagnostic approaches for severe vLRTI.
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Importance: Patients with underlying cardiac disease form a considerable proportion of pediatric patients who experience in-hospital cardiac arrest. In pediatric patients after cardiac surgery, CPR with abdominal compressions alone (AC-CPR) may provide an alternative to standard chest compression CPR (S-CPR) with additional procedural and physiologic advantages.

Objective: Quantitatively describe hemodynamics during cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) and outcomes of infants who received only abdominal compressions (AC-CPR).

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Background: Sepsis-associated brain injury is associated with deterioration of mental status, persistent cognitive impairment, and morbidity. The SUR1/TRPM4 channel is a nonselective cation channel that is transcriptionally upregulated in the central nervous system with injury, allowing sodium influx, depolarization, cellular swelling, and secondary injury. We hypothesized that genetic variation in ABCC8 (SUR1 gene) and TRPM4 would associate with central nervous system dysfunction in severe pediatric sepsis.

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Background: Tracheal intubation (TI)-associated cardiac arrest (TI-CA) occurs in 1.7% of pediatric ICU TIs. Our objective was to evaluate resuscitation characteristics and outcomes between cardiac arrest patients with and without TI-CA.

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Purpose: Sepsis causes significant worldwide morbidity and mortality. Inability to clear an infection and secondary infections are known complications in severe sepsis and likely result in worsened outcomes. We sought to characterize risk factors of these complications.

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Article Synopsis
  • The study focused on pediatric in-hospital CPR events, particularly those involving bradycardia with poor perfusion, to evaluate the effects of early epinephrine on survival outcomes in children.
  • Researchers analyzed data from the ICU-RESUS trial, which involved CPR events that lasted 2 minutes or longer, examining the timing of epinephrine administration and the development of pulselessness.
  • Findings indicated that early epinephrine did not significantly improve the chances of survival or favorable neurological outcomes, while a high percentage of patients experienced pulselessness within the first few minutes of CPR.
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Background: Adherence with follow-up appointments after a pediatric intensive care unit (PICU) admission is likely a key component in managing post-PICU sequalae. However, prior work on PICU follow-up adherence is limited. The objective of this study is to identify hospitalization characteristics, discharge child health metrics, and follow-up characteristics associated with full adherence with recommended follow-up at a quaternary care center after a PICU admission due to respiratory failure.

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Objectives: Social determinants of health (SDOH) are associated with disparities in disease severity and in-hospital outcomes among critically ill children. It is unknown whether SDOH are associated with later outcomes. We evaluated associations between SDOH measures and mortality, new functional morbidity, and health-related quality of life (HRQL) decline among children surviving septic shock.

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Objectives: Data to support epinephrine dosing intervals during cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) are conflicting. The objective of this study was to evaluate the association between epinephrine dosing intervals and outcomes. We hypothesized that dosing intervals less than 3 minutes would be associated with improved neurologic survival compared with greater than or equal to 3 minutes.

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Adult and pediatric studies provide conflicting data regarding whether post-cardiac arrest hypoxemia, hyperoxemia, hypercapnia, and/or hypocapnia are associated with worse outcomes. We sought to determine whether postarrest hypoxemia or postarrest hyperoxemia is associated with lower rates of survival to hospital discharge, compared with postarrest normoxemia, and whether postarrest hypocapnia or hypercapnia is associated with lower rates of survival, compared with postarrest normocapnia. An embedded prospective observational study during a multicenter interventional cardiopulmonary resuscitation trial was conducted from 2016 to 2021.

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Objectives: To describe family healthcare burden and health resource utilization in pediatric survivors of acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS) at 3 and 9 months.

Design: Secondary analysis of a prospective multisite cohort study.

Setting: Eight academic PICUs in the United States (2019-2020).

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Importance: Sepsis is a leading cause of pediatric mortality. Little attention has been paid to the association between viral DNA and mortality in children and adolescents with sepsis.

Objective: To assess the association of the presence of viral DNA with sepsis-related mortality in a large multicenter study.

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Article Synopsis
  • The study developed a 7-point Desirability of Outcome Ranking (DOOR) scale to assess outcomes in children with septic shock, aiming to link it to their health-related quality of life (HRQL) or death over three months.
  • * It involved a secondary analysis of data from the Life After Pediatric Sepsis Evaluation study conducted in 12 U.S. Pediatric Intensive Care Units (PICUs) from 2013 to 2017, focusing on patients aged 1 month to 18 years with septic shock.
  • * The findings revealed fair correlations between the PCC-DOOR scores measured at 7, 14, and 21 days post-admission and outcomes related to HRQL or death, suggesting the scale could be
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  • The study investigated the effectiveness of extracorporeal membrane oxygenation (ECPR) for pediatric patients who did not respond to traditional cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) methods, focusing on early hemodynamics and end-tidal carbon dioxide (ET CO2) levels as potential indicators for survival and neurologic outcomes.
  • Data was collected from 97 ECPR patients across 18 ICUs from 2016-2021, revealing that most patients were under one year old and had congenital heart disease; only 41% of patients survived with favorable neurologic outcomes.
  • The study found no significant differences in blood pressure measures or chest compression rates between those who survived
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Aim: Pediatric cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) guidelines recommend starting CPR for heart rates (HRs) less than 60 beats per minute (bpm) with poor perfusion. Objectives were to (1) compare HRs and arterial blood pressures (BPs) prior to CPR among patients with clinician-reported bradycardia with poor perfusion ("BRADY") vs. pulseless electrical activity (PEA); and (2) determine if hemodynamics prior to CPR are associated with outcomes.

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Introduction: Providing support to parents is an evidence-based practice and a crucial part of family-centered nursing care. However, it is not clear who and how to provide the best support to parents during and after their child's resuscitation attempts.

Purpose: This study was conducted to explore the characteristics and roles of parental supporters responsible for caring for parents during and after their child's resuscitation.

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Background: Supported by laboratory and clinical investigations of adult cardiopulmonary arrest, resuscitation guidelines recommend monitoring end-tidal carbon dioxide (ETCO) as an indicator of cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) quality, but they note that "specific values to guide therapy have not been established in children."

Methods: This prospective observational cohort study was a National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute-funded ancillary study of children in the ICU-RESUS trial (Intensive Care Unit-Resuscitation Project; NCT02837497). Hospitalized children (≤18 years of age and ≥37 weeks postgestational age) who received chest compressions of any duration for cardiopulmonary arrest, had an endotracheal or tracheostomy tube at the start of CPR, and evaluable intra-arrest ETCO data were included.

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Introduction: Though early hypotension after pediatric in-hospital cardiac arrest (IHCA) is associated with inferior outcomes, ideal post-arrest blood pressure (BP) targets have not been established. We aimed to leverage prospectively collected BP data to explore the association of post-arrest BP thresholds with outcomes. We hypothesized that post-arrest systolic and diastolic BP thresholds would be higher than the currently recommended post-cardiopulmonary resuscitation BP targets and would be associated with higher rates of survival to hospital discharge.

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Objectives: Viral lower respiratory tract infection (vLRTI) contributes to substantial morbidity and mortality in children. Diagnosis is typically confirmed by reverse transcriptase polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) of nasopharyngeal specimens in hospitalized patients; however, it is unknown whether nasopharyngeal detection accurately reflects presence of virus in the lower respiratory tract (LRT). This study evaluates agreement between viral detection from nasopharyngeal specimens by RT-PCR compared with metagenomic next-generation RNA sequencing (RNA-Seq) from tracheal aspirates (TAs).

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Objectives: To assess associations between outcome and cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) quality for in-hospital cardiac arrest (IHCA) in children with medical cardiac, surgical cardiac, or noncardiac disease.

Design: Secondary analysis of a multicenter cluster randomized trial, the ICU-RESUScitation Project (NCT02837497, 2016-2021).

Setting: Eighteen PICUs.

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Background: One of five global deaths are attributable to sepsis. Hyperferritinemic sepsis (> 500 ng/mL) is associated with increased mortality in single-center studies. Our pediatric research network's objective was to obtain rationale for designing anti-inflammatory clinical trials targeting hyperferritinemic sepsis.

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Aim: To evaluate associations between characteristics of simulated point-of-care cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) training with simulated and actual intensive care unit (ICU) CPR performance, and with outcomes of children after in-hospital cardiac arrest.

Methods: This is a pre-specified secondary analysis of the ICU-RESUScitation Project; a prospective, multicentre cluster randomized interventional trial conducted in 18 ICUs from October 2016-March 2021. Point-of-care bedside simulations with real-time feedback to allow multidisciplinary ICU staff to practice CPR on a portable manikin were performed and quality metrics (rate, depth, release velocity, chest compression fraction) were recorded.

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