Background: The preparation for critically ill children involves calculating drug and fluid volumes using the commonly taught WETFLAG (weight, energy, endotracheal tube, fluids, lorazepam, adrenaline, glucose) acronym. While smartphone applications (apps) are increasingly used for these calculations in clinical practice, limited studies have explored their accuracy and safety.
Aim: To assess the accuracy of three calculation methods for paediatric emergency drug doses and fluid volumes: a smartphone app, reference charts and traditional calculation methods.
BMJ Open
March 2023
Introduction: Early recognition and appropriate management of paediatric sepsis are known to improve outcomes. A previous system's biology investigation of the systemic immune response in neonates to sepsis identified immune and metabolic markers that showed high accuracy for detecting bacterial infection. Further gene expression markers have also been reported previously in the paediatric age group for discriminating sepsis from control cases.
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