The Pediatric Intensive Care Unit as a Critical Care Setting for Adults during the COVID-19 Pandemic: A Service Evaluation.

One strategy to expand critical care capacity during the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic within the United Kingdom has been to repurpose other clinical departments, including the pediatric intensive care unit (PICU) and pediatric multidisciplinary team, to accommodate critically unwell adult patients. While multiple PICUs have treated adult patients with COVID-19, there is an absence of data on the characteristics of patients transferred to pediatric care and their resulting outcomes in comparison to standard adult intensive care unit (AICU) provision. Data were collected for all adult COVID-19 intensive care admissions between March and May 2020, in three ICUs within a single center: PICU, AICU, and theater recovery ICU (RICU).

The Inflammatory and Hemostatic Response in Sepsis and Meningococcemia.

Meningococcemia is notorious for evasion of the host immune system and its rapid progression to fulminant disease, and serves as a unique model for pediatric sepsis. Illness severity is determined by complex interplays among host, pathogen, and environment. The inflammatory host response, including proinflammatory and anti-inflammatory responses in innate and adaptive immunity, skews toward a proinflammatory state.

Incidence and Predictors of Bacterial infection in Febrile Children with Sickle Cell Disease.

Children with sickle cell disease are at increased risk of developing bacteremia and other serious bacterial infections. Fever is a common symptom in sickle cell disease and can also occur with sickle cell crises and viral infections. We aimed to evaluate the incidence and predictors of bacteremia and bacterial infection in children with sickle cell disease presenting with fever to a district hospital and sickle cell center in London.

When choosing injectable penicillin for the treatment of group A beta-hemolytic streptococcal pharyngitis, there is a less painful choice.

Objective: To determine whether injection of patients with Bicillin CR is less painful than injection with Bicillin LA. To discover if Bicillin CR with the addition of procaine, which doubles the volume, causes the injection to be less painful.

Design: An experimental, double-blinded crossover design was used for this study.