Bereavement care in critical care units should involve providing support and counseling for the family members prior to death, immediately after the death has occurred, and at least some follow-up in the future months. These are crucial moments: Once…
OBJECTIVE: To explore patient-related factors which influence the decisions of pediatric intensive care unit (ICU) caregivers to restrict life-support interventions. DESIGN: Cross-sectional survey. SETTING: A university-affiliated pediatric ICU.…
OBJECTIVES: The authors evaluate a measure of the validity of utility elicitations and study the potential effects of invalid elicitations on population utility values. METHODS: The authors used a computerized survey to describe and measure…
OBJECTIVE: To determine the frequency of selective nontreatment of extremely premature, critically ill, or malformed infants among all infant deaths in a level III intensive care nursery (ICN) and to determine the reasons documented by neonatologists…
It is widely believed that the improved survival of young people with chronic diseases will be associated with the development of appropriate services within the adult healthcare domain. There is, however, little evidence to suggest that this is…
This retrospective study includes 65 children treated for status epilepticus at Tampere University Hospital in Finland. Aetiology of the condition, effectiveness of the treatment protocol, including short barbiturate anaesthesia to prevent prolonged…
Feeding difficulties are common in neurologically impaired children, often leading to great distress and frustration in the child and family. A gastrostomy may be advocated if oral intake is inadequate causing poor weight gain or when there is…
OBJECTIVE: To describe family perceptions of care at the end of life. METHODS: In a representative sample of older people who died from chronic diseases, family members were interviewed about satisfaction with treatment intensity, decision-making,…
PURPOSE: To explore and describe the health-related, help-seeking behaviors of young female Mexican-American adolescents. DESIGN: Qualitative exploratory-descriptive design using focus groups. SETTING: Community recreation centers. PARTICIPANTS: 18…
The response to the bisphosphonate, pamidronate, is reported in a child with osteogenesis imperfecta who had recurrent symptomatic hypercalcaemia after immobilisation following fractures. Oral clodronate was effective in the prevention of…
beta-Endorphin (beta-EP) and cholecystokinin 8 (CCK-8) concentrations in peripheral blood mononuclear cells were measured in 12 drug-free autistic (AU) children, in 10 drug-free children with pervasive developmental disorders (PDD) and in 11 healthy…
Localized inflammation of a rat's hindpaw elicits an accumulation of beta-endorphin-(END) containing immune cells. We investigated the production, release, and antinociceptive effects of lymphocyte-derived END in relation to cell trafficking. In…
This study was carried out in eight palliative care services in four Canadian cities. A revised version of The McGill Quality of Life Questionnaire (MQOL) is compared to a single-item scale measuring overall quality of life (SIS), and the…
PURPOSE: To determine how patients weigh potential survival benefits against the potential toxicity of different treatment strategies for locally advanced non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC). Specifically, we were interested in what improvement in…
PURPOSE: Along with evidence, clinical policies must take patients' values into account. Particularly where evidence is limited and where assumptions of utility-maximizing behavior may not be valid, new methods such as trade-off techniques (TOTs),…
OBJECTIVE: To compare the use of analgesia in children to adults in 3 different emergency department (ED) settings. METHODS: Forty adult and 40 pediatric ED charts were randomly selected for review at each of 3 institutions: an academic medical…
Traditionally, opioids have been administered as fixed doses at fixed dose intervals. This approach has been largely ineffective. Patient-controlled analgesia (PCA) and upgraded traditional approaches incorporating flexibility in dose size and dose…
Fentanyl is a synthetic opioid with short-acting analgesic activity after intravenous or subcutaneous administration. The low molecular weight, high potency and lipid solubility of fentanyl make it suitable for delivery via the transdermal…
OBJECTIVE: This study examined the equivalence reliability of two administration methods for the Functional Independence Measure for Children (WeeFIM). The two methods were direct observation of child performance and parental interview. METHOD:…
Investigators of sibling bereavement contend that the death of a sibling represents a unique and intense loss experience. The empirical literature, however, lacks conceptual clarity about the characteristics of sibling bereavement. Metaphors of…
Objectives. Do not resuscitate (DNR) orders are increasingly common, though there has been little evaluation of their changing use. The authors contrasted the use and outcomes of DNR orders for nationally representative samples of Medicare patients…
The complexity of assessing the impact of palliative care is much greater than in other fields of medicine, due to the shortcomings of traditional outcome indicators. We conducted a prospective study to describe the patient's quality of life at the…
OBJECTIVE: To derive prognostic data for survival and clinical improvement in children with severe developmental disabilities. STUDY DESIGN: A 13-year follow-up study of several cohorts of children initially evaluated before their first birthday. The…
