Publications by authors named "Wessel D"

These case studies review the treatment of patients with overactive bladder (OAB), a chronic condition presenting with urinary urgency, often occurring with frequency and nocturia, which may or may not be associated with urinary incontinence. Patients with OAB can have multiple clinical factors to consider when selecting the optimal therapy, and this treatment series provides examples of approaches to balance treatment selection with other comorbidities and patient expectations.

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Article Synopsis
  • The PECOS study is investigating the long-term effects of pediatric SARS-CoV-2 infections by comparing infected and uninfected participants aged 0-21.
  • Participants were assessed on various health metrics, including symptom reports, physical exams, and psychological surveys, revealing that those infected reported significantly worse outcomes in several health domains.
  • The findings indicate that SARS-CoV-2 infection could negatively impact children's overall quality of life, highlighting the importance of ongoing research to understand these long-term effects.
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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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  • 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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Despite advances in treatment of children with critical heart disease, cardiac arrest (CA) remains a common occurrence. We provided virtual support to bedside teams (BTs) from a tele-critical care (TCC) unit in a pediatric cardiac intensive care unit (CICU) and focused on early detection of concerning trends (CT) and avoidance of CA. Virtual surveillance workflows included a review of remote monitoring, video feed from patient room cameras, medical records, and artificial intelligence tools.

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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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Introduction: While pharmaceutical companies aim to leverage real-world data (RWD) to bridge the gap between clinical drug development and real-world patient outcomes, extant research has mainly focused on the use of social media in a post-approval safety-surveillance setting. Recent regulatory and technological developments indicate that social media may serve as a rich source to expand the evidence base to pre-approval and drug development activities. However, use cases related to drug development have been largely omitted, thereby missing some of the benefits of RWD.

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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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Epidemiologic studies suggest that prenatal exposures to certain viruses may influence early neurodevelopment, predisposing offspring to neuropsychiatric conditions later in life. The long-term effects of maternal COVID-19 infection in pregnancy on early brain development, however, remain largely unknown. We prospectively enrolled infants in an observational cohort study for a single-site study in the Washington, DC Metropolitan Area from June 2020 to November 2021 and compared these infants to pre-pandemic controls (studied March 2014-February 2020).

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Microwave photonics aims to overcome the limitations of radiofrequency devices and systems by leveraging the unique properties of optics in terms of low loss and power consumption, broadband operation, immunity to interference and tunability. This enables versatile functions like beam steering, crucial in emerging applications such as the Internet of Things (IoT) and 5/6G networks. The main problem with current photonic beamforming architectures is that there is a tradeoff between resolution and bandwidth, which has not yet been solved.

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Telemedicine is seen as a useful tool in reducing gaps in health care but this technology-enabled care can also exacerbate health inequity if not implemented with a focus on inclusivity. Though many studies have reported improvements as well as exacerbation of disparities in access to care in their telehealth programs, there does not exist a common evaluation tool to assess these programs. To mitigate the impact of COVID-19 on health care workers and protect medically vulnerable children, in March 2020 we expanded our pre-established specialty and subspecialty direct-to-patient pediatric telemedicine program in a high volume urban pediatric health system.

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Article Synopsis
  • 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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Background: Congenital heart disease (CHD) remains a significant risk factor for neurologic injury because altered fetal hemodynamics may be unable to support typical brain development during critical periods of growth and maturation.

Objectives: The primary objective was to assess differences in the cerebral biochemical profile between healthy fetuses and fetuses with complex CHD and to relate these with infant outcomes.

Methods: Pregnant participants underwent fetal magnetic resonance imaging with cerebral proton magnetic resonance spectroscopy acquisitions as part of a prospective observational study.

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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: 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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  • The study investigates the impact of early, persistent lymphopenia (low lymphocyte count) on the outcomes of pediatric patients with severe sepsis, aiming to understand its correlation with worse health outcomes.
  • Out of 401 children studied, 38% exhibited persistent lymphopenia, which was linked to higher rates of prolonged multiple organ dysfunction syndrome (MODS) and increased mortality in the pediatric intensive care unit (PICU).
  • The presence of persistent lymphopenia was found to significantly increase the odds of poor outcomes, with a nearly threefold increase in risk, highlighting the need for further research into immune support therapies for young patients with sepsis.
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Background: Previous studies have identified pulmonary hypertension (PH) as a relatively common diagnosis in children with in-hospital cardiac arrest (IHCA), and preclinical laboratory studies have found poor outcomes and low systemic blood pressures during CPR for PH-associated cardiac arrest. The objective of this study was to determine the prevalence of PH among children with IHCA and the association between PH diagnosis and intra-arrest physiology and survival outcomes.

Methods: This was a prospectively designed secondary analysis of patients enrolled in the ICU-RESUS clinical trial (NCT02837497).

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Background: Cardiac complications of serious SARS-CoV-2 infections, especially Multisystem Inflammatory Syndrome of Children (MIS-C) are well described, however current studies have not considered pediatric patients hospitalized with no cardiac concerns. We established a protocol for cardiac evaluation of all admitted COVID-19 patients three weeks post-discharge, irrespective of cardiac concerns. We assessed cardiovascular outcomes and hypothesized that patients with absent cardiac concerns are at lower risk for cardiac abnormalities.

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  • The study investigates the occurrence and contributing factors of acute disorders of consciousness (DoC) in children under 18 years old suffering from severe sepsis with organ failure, highlighting that 18% of cases exhibited signs of DoC.
  • The primary findings indicate that older children and those with multiple organ failure (MOF) are more likely to experience DoC, with increased mortality rates and associations with specific types of MOF, including nonphenotypeable and immunoparalysis-associated.
  • The research emphasizes the importance of recognizing DoC in pediatric sepsis cases as it correlates with worse outcomes and provides insight into factors that could inform clinical management.
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