Publications by authors named "Robinder G Khemani"

Article Synopsis
  • The study aimed to assess factors affecting the implementation of ventilator liberation guidelines for pediatric patients and create a strategy for an international collaborative effort called VentLib4Kids.
  • The survey involved 26 pediatric intensive care units (PICUs) across 18 centers, gathering 409 responses from various healthcare professionals, such as doctors, nurses, and respiratory therapists.
  • Three implementation tiers were established based on consensus about various practices, showing that extubation readiness testing was well-agreed upon, while more complex practices like respiratory muscle strength testing had significant gaps in perception and agreement among respondents.
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Article Synopsis
  • Asthma is a prevalent cause for hospitalization in children and can significantly affect their quality of life; non-invasive positive pressure ventilation (NPPV) is being explored as a potential add-on therapy despite weak evidence and lack of guidelines.
  • The review aimed to evaluate the benefits and drawbacks of using NPPV alongside standard treatments for children under 18 facing acute asthma episodes, focusing on randomized clinical trials (RCTs).
  • Three RCTs involving a total of 120 children were analyzed, all assessing the impact of bilevel positive airway pressure (BiPAP) on acute asthma in a pediatric intensive care unit, with primary outcomes including mortality and serious adverse events.
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Background: The 2023 International Pediatric Ventilator Liberation Clinical Practice Guidelines provided evidence-based recommendations to guide pediatric critical care providers on how to perform daily aspects of ventilator liberation. However, because of the lack of high-quality pediatric studies, most recommendations were conditional based on very low to low certainty of evidence.

Research Question: What are the research gaps related to pediatric ventilator liberation that can be studied to strengthen the evidence for future updates of the guidelines?

Study Design And Methods: We conducted systematic reviews of the literature in eight predefined Population, Intervention, Comparator, Outcome (PICO) areas related to pediatric ventilator liberation to generate recommendations.

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Objectives: We sought to evaluate the association between the carbon dioxide ( co2 ) ventilatory equivalent (VEq co2 = minute ventilation/volume of co2 produced per min), a marker of dead space that does not require a blood gas measurement, and mortality risk. We compared the strength of this association to that of physiologic dead space fraction (V D /V t = [Pa co2 -mixed-expired P co2 ]/Pa co2 ) as well as to other commonly used markers of dead space (i.e.

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Invasive mechanical ventilation is prevalent and associated with considerable morbidity. Pediatric critical care teams must identify the best timing and approach to liberating (extubating) children from this supportive care modality. Unsurprisingly, practice variation varies widely.

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Article Synopsis
  • The study investigates the differences in mortality rates between children and adults with acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS), revealing lower mortality in children despite similar severity of illness.
  • Using data from various cohorts, researchers found a nonlinear relationship between age and 90-day mortality, with risk increasing more rapidly for individuals aged 11 to 65 years.
  • The study concluded that while pediatric ARDS has a lower mortality rate (19%) compared to adults (33% and 67% in different cohorts), age plays a significant role in mortality risk for both children and adults.
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Article Synopsis
  • Monitoring respiratory effort in ventilated pediatric patients is crucial for protecting lung function and diaphragm effectiveness, but current methods like esophageal manometry are invasive and require special training.
  • This study analyzed data from children with acute respiratory distress syndrome to correlate changes in esophageal pressure during breathing with airway pressures from three specific occlusion maneuvers.
  • Results indicated that expiratory occlusion pressure has the strongest correlation with esophageal pressure changes, suggesting its potential as a reliable, less invasive method to assess respiratory effort in children.
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Objective: Substantial practice variation exists in the management of children with nonsevere traumatic intracranial hemorrhage (tICH). A comprehensive understanding of rates and timing of clinically important tICH, including critical interventions and deterioration, along with associated clinical and neuroradiographic characteristics, will inform accurate risk stratification.

Methods: We conducted a single-center retrospective cohort study of children aged younger than 18 years evaluated in the emergency department (ED) from May 1, 2014 to February 28, 2020 with tICH and initial Glasgow Coma Scale (GCS) score of higher than 8.

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Patients in intensive care units are frequently supported by mechanical ventilation. There is increasing awareness of patient-ventilator dyssynchrony (PVD), a mismatch between patient respiratory effort and assistance provided by the ventilator, as a risk factor for infection, narcotic exposure, lung injury, and adverse neurocognitive effects. One of the most injurious consequences of PVD are double cycled (DC) breaths when two breaths are delivered by the ventilator instead of one.

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Objectives: To develop, evaluate, and explore the use of a pediatric ordinal score as a potential clinical trial outcome metric in children hospitalized with acute hypoxic respiratory failure caused by viral respiratory infections.

Design: We modified the World Health Organization Clinical Progression Scale for pediatric patients (CPS-Ped) and assigned CPS-Ped at admission, days 2-4, 7, and 14. We identified predictors of clinical improvement (day 14 CPS-Ped ≤ 2 or a three-point decrease) using competing risks regression and compared clinical improvement to hospital length of stay (LOS) and ventilator-free days.

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Importance: Extubation failure (EF) has been associated with worse outcomes in critically ill children. The relative efficacy of different modes of noninvasive respiratory support (NRS) to prevent EF is unknown.

Objective: To study the reported relative efficacy of different modes of NRS (high-flow nasal cannula [HFNC], continuous positive airway pressure [CPAP], and bilevel positive airway pressure [BiPAP]) compared to conventional oxygen therapy (COT).

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Objectives: Untangling the heterogeneity of sepsis in children and identifying clinically relevant phenotypes could lead to the development of targeted therapies. Our aim was to analyze the organ dysfunction trajectories of children with sepsis-associated multiple organ dysfunction syndrome (MODS) to identify reproducible and clinically relevant sepsis phenotypes and determine if they are associated with heterogeneity of treatment effect (HTE) to common therapies.

Design: Multicenter observational cohort study.

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Objectives: The worldwide practice and impact of noninvasive ventilation (NIV) in pediatric acute respiratory distress syndrome (PARDS) is unknown. We sought to describe NIV use and associated clinical outcomes in PARDS.

Design: Planned ancillary study to the 2016/2017 prospective Pediatric Acute Respiratory Distress Syndrome Incidence and Epidemiology study.

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Article Synopsis
  • * The review discusses methods for calibrating balloon catheters and interpreting esophageal pressure measurements, both directly and via elastance-based methods, to enhance clinical practices.
  • * Clinical applications of esophageal manometry include assessing lung compliance, optimizing ventilator support, and aiding in weaning patients off ventilation, providing tailored care for those with respiratory issues.
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Background: Timely ventilator liberation can prevent morbidities associated with invasive mechanical ventilation in the pediatric ICU (PICU). There currently exists no standard benchmark for duration of invasive mechanical ventilation in the PICU. This study sought to develop and validate a multi-center prediction model of invasive mechanical ventilation duration to determine a standardized duration of invasive mechanical ventilation ratio.

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Article Synopsis
  • The study investigates the effectiveness of Effort of Breathing (EOB) calculations as an alternative to Work of Breathing (WOB) measurements in nonhuman primates during increased inspiratory resistance, mimicking upper airway obstruction.
  • Through the use of Respiratory Inductance Plethysmography (RIP) and other measurements, researchers found that EOB and WOB showed strong correlations, indicating similar responses to higher resistive loads.
  • The findings suggest that EOB could serve as a reliable substitute for WOB, especially in scenarios where spirometry is unavailable, offering new monitoring opportunities for non-invasive ventilation.
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Acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS), including severe pulmonary COVID infection, is associated with a high mortality rate. It is crucial to detect ARDS early, as a late diagnosis may lead to serious complications in treatment. One of the challenges in ARDS diagnosis is chest X-ray (CXR) interpretation.

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Background: The end-tidal alveolar dead space fraction (AVDSf = [PaCO-PCO]/PaCO) is a metric used to estimate alveolar dead space. Higher AVDSf on the first day of mechanical ventilation is associated with mortality and fewer ventilator-free days. It is not clear if AVDSf is associated with length of ventilation in survivors, how AVDSf performs for risk stratification beyond the first day of ventilation, or whether AVDSf adds predictive value to oxygenation (oxygenation index [OI]) or severity of illness (Pediatric Risk of Mortality [PRISM III]) markers.

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Objectives: We sought to update our 2015 work in the Second Pediatric Acute Lung Injury Consensus Conference (PALICC-2) guidelines for the diagnosis and management of pediatric acute respiratory distress syndrome (PARDS), considering new evidence and topic areas that were not previously addressed.

Design: International consensus conference series involving 52 multidisciplinary international content experts in PARDS and four methodology experts from 15 countries, using consensus conference methodology, and implementation science.

Setting: Not applicable.

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Pediatric-specific ventilator liberation guidelines are lacking despite the many studies exploring elements of extubation readiness testing. The lack of clinical practice guidelines has led to significant and unnecessary variation in methods used to assess pediatric patients' readiness for extubation. Twenty-six international experts comprised a multiprofessional panel to establish pediatrics-specific ventilator liberation clinical practice guidelines, focusing on acutely hospitalized children receiving invasive mechanical ventilation for more than 24 hours.

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Article Synopsis
  • - PARDS is a severe lung condition in children that differs from ARDS in adults due to factors like age, lung growth, and underlying health issues, resulting in higher mortality and long-term health problems.
  • - There is no specific treatment for PARDS; current management focuses on supportive care, highlighting the need for better strategies to identify who might benefit from targeted interventions like specific ventilation techniques or prone positioning.
  • - Improving our understanding of the diverse clinical features of PARDS compared to adult ARDS, and utilizing advanced data analysis techniques, could lead to more personalized and effective treatment approaches in the future.
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