Nudging During Pediatric Intensive Care Conferences With Family Members: Retrospective Analysis of Transcripts From a Single-Center, 2015-2019.

Objectives: Nudging, a behavioral economics concept, subtly influences decision-making without coercion or limiting choice. Despite its frequent use, the specific application of nudging techniques by clinicians in shared decision-making (SDM) is understudied. Our aim was to analyze clinicians' use of nudging in a curated dataset of family care conferences in the PICU.

The American Association for Thoracic Surgery (AATS) 2023 Expert Consensus Document: Recommendation for the care of children with trisomy 13 or trisomy 18 and a congenital heart defect.

Objectives: Recommendations for surgical repair of a congenital heart defect in children with trisomy 13 or trisomy 18 remain controversial, are subject to biases, and are largely unsupported with limited empirical data. This has created significant distrust and uncertainty among parents and could potentially lead to suboptimal care for patients. A working group, representing several clinical specialties involved with the care of these children, developed recommendations to assist in the decision-making process for congenital heart defect care in this population.

Nonresuscitation Fluid Accumulation and Outcomes After Pediatric Cardiac Surgery: Single-Center Retrospective Cohort Study.

Objectives: Postoperative patients after congenital cardiac surgery are at high risk of fluid overload (FO), which is known to be associated with poor outcomes. "Fluid creep," or nonresuscitation IV fluid in excess of maintenance requirement, is recognized as a modifiable factor associated with FO in the general PICU population, but has not been studied in congenital cardiac surgery patients. Our objective was to characterize fluid administration after congenital cardiac surgery, quantify fluid creep, and the association between fluid creep, FO, and outcome.

Cardiac critical care of the post-operative congenital heart disease patient.

Cardiac critical care has become an increasingly complex subspecialty, involving multiple subspecialists to support patients with congenital heart disease. This requires understanding of their physiology and the impact of medical interventions. The purpose of this article is to provide a concise review of the current strategies utilized by cardiac intensivists to optimize outcomes for this vulnerable patient population, with the goal of broadening the knowledge of other members of the multi-disciplinary team.

The True Abuse of Futility.

Futility has wrongly been applied over the past decades to clinical scenarios where treatment disputes exist, but where true physiological futility is not certain. This particularly applies to the pediatric critical care arena, where a major source of ethical debate and moral concern surrounds decisions about appropriateness of treatment, and not necessarily futility. In the pediatric intensive care unit, Schneiderman and colleagues' (2017) definitions of quantitative and qualitative futility are rarely applicable.

Grief and Burnout in the PICU.

Doctors and nurses who work in PICUs often deal with emotionally difficult events. These events take a toll. They can cause long-term psychological problems that, if not addressed, can impair the ability of doctors and nurses to care for patients in a competent and compassionate manner.

Are we allowed to discontinue medical treatment in this child?

One of the most difficult ethical dilemmas in pediatrics today arises when a child has complex chronic conditions that are not curable and cause discomfort with no prospect of any improvement on quality of life. In the context of medical futility, it is harmful to prolong medical treatment. The question is: How can medical treatment be discontinued when the child is not dependent on mechanical ventilation or ICU treatment? What is the appropriate palliative care and does it justify the use of sedatives or analgesics if this also might shorten life?