Please note that there will be no more posts published on the ADC Precis blog.

In a study of 454 Malawian children with severe malnutrition, those with HIV had a higher mortality, but those with HIV who survived had a comparible nutritional recovery with those who did not have HIV.  Here. 

In a retrospective review of a low risk predictor for serious bacterial infection in 449 febrile neonates over a ten year period demonstrated that it performs poorly.  Here.

It’s one of the many things on the wishlist; the tool that would tell you, with perfect sensitivity and specificity which of the febrile neonates before you had serious bacterial infection and which didn’t.  This tool, which classified children as low risk if they didn’t look unwell, had a low white cell count, negative for white cells on urine dip, and a low CSF white cell count.  Oddly, with this latter one they used less than 23 white cells per high powered field, which is not a number I’ve come across before.  Sadly 14 of the 226 infants classified as low risk had a serious bacterial infection…

Now then, where did I put that holy grail?…  

Use of a novel too, an analgesia wheel, improved accuracy of prescription of analgesia and anti-emetics.  Here.

A 16 year retrospective survey of practice in tertiary Australian institution showed 14 children with 26 episodes of severe enterocolitis caused by rice; equivalent to the levels seen with milk.  Here.

The retrieval service for New South Wales present some data on their service.  Here.

In a pilot randomised controlled trial, half of 44 children were given home oxygen to treat hypoxia in bronchiolitis, resulting in signifcantly shorter hospital stays.  Here. 

Seems a bit mad at first.  But there is method in their madness.  After all, who in acute paediatrics in the Northern hemisphere is not spending a large proportion of their ward rounds at this time of year watching children with bronchiolitis slowly come off oxygen?  I think there would be some challenges in adapting this locally; I suspect the level of deprivation in Perth, Australia, is slightly different to my own urban inner city practice.  And I don’t know enough about the health and safety regulations (anyone an expert in HOOF?) to be able to say whether you’d even be allowed to do it in the UK.  But it is a nice example of the fact that quite often you don’t need quite as much of the hospital as you might have thought. 

In a series of Israeli children the timing and method of circumcision seemed to indicate a relationship between this and the development of urinary tract infection.  Here.

In a UK cohort of 73 children diagnosed with type II diabetes assessed at one year after diagnosis, there had been little change in the BMI SDS and variabiltiy in the management plan.  Here.

42% of a series of 50 Austrialian children born at less than 29 weeks gestation or 1000 grams birth weight were assessed at 8 years and found to have developmental coordination disorder, compared to 8% of controls.  Here.