When a child arrives at the emergency department (ED) with sepsis, one of the first treatments they receive is intravenous (IV) fluids. For decades, clinicians have debated which kind of IV fluid works best. A new PECARN-led trial finally has an answer: it doesn’t seem to matter. The PRoMPT BOLUS trial, published in the New […]
When children arrive at the emergency department (ED) with behavioral health symptoms like suicidal thoughts, anxiety, or behavioral crises, a triage nurse quickly decides how urgently they need care. But does this process work equally well for all children? A new PECARN study “Overtriage and Undertriage of Children Presenting to the Emergency Department for Behavioral […]
When a physician in the Season 2 premiere of the medical drama The Pitt invoked PECARN protocols while evaluating a febrile infant in the emergency department, millions of viewers witnessed something remarkable: a decade of painstaking research distilled into a single clinical decision. The landmark study behind that moment, “A Clinical Prediction Rule to Identify […]
Sepsis kills children. It is a leading cause of pediatric death, with an in-hospital mortality of 5-20% in the United States [1, 2]. Early recognition and treatment improve outcomes, but predicting which emergency department (ED) patients will develop sepsis remains a major clinical challenge. Current sepsis screening tools are designed primarily to identify children who […]
