Parents' prioritised outcomes for trials investigating treatments for paediatric severe infection: a qualitative synthesis.

Objective: To identify parents' prioritised outcomes by combining qualitative findings from two trial feasibility studies of interventions for paediatric suspected severe infection.

Design: Qualitative synthesis combining parent interview data from the Fluids in Shock (FiSh) and Fever feasibility studies. Parents had experience of their child being admitted to a UK emergency department or intensive care unit with a suspected infection.

Intrathecal clonidine in the neonatal rat: dose-dependent analgesia and evaluation of spinal apoptosis and toxicity.

Background: Neuraxial clonidine is used for perioperative analgesia in children of all ages. Preclinical studies in the postnatal rat allow comparison of the relative toxicity and safety of spinal analgesics throughout postnatal development.

Methods: Rat pups aged 3, 7, or 21 postnatal (P) days were briefly anesthetized for intrathecal injections of saline or clonidine.

Priming of adult pain responses by neonatal pain experience: maintenance by central neuroimmune activity.

Adult brain connectivity is shaped by the balance of sensory inputs in early life. In the case of pain pathways, it is less clear whether nociceptive inputs in infancy can have a lasting influence upon central pain processing and adult pain sensitivity. Here, we show that adult pain responses in the rat are 'primed' by tissue injury in the neonatal period.

Speech, language, and cognitive development in children with isolated sagittal synostosis.

This study investigated the occurrence, nature, and severity of speech, language, and cognitive impairment in 76 children (61 males, 15 females) with isolated sagittal synostosis (ISS) aged 9 months to 15 years 7 months. There was no increased prevalence of global cognitive impairment in the group but there was a high prevalence rate of speech and/or language impairment with 28 (37%) displaying impairment of whom 20 (71%) had moderate or severe impairments that fulfilled the criteria for specific impairments. Prevalence rates were only increased for children over two years of age.