Major traumatic brain injury is a huge issue for Paediatric Intensive Care. We have machines for almost every organ: but the brain is on its own. Shruti Agrawal, consultant in paediatric intensive care in Addenbrookes Hospital, Cambridge, is first author on the Starship study, recently published in the Lancet eClinical Read more…
“Saving lives” is what we do. But at what cost? Are we threatening the survival of the world by our PIC practices? What’s the point of healthcare, if we are destroying the world’s future for those same children? We talked to Heather Baid, an ICU nurse and lead for sustainability Read more…
Nudge nudge…. a favourite of politicians and social commentators, but how can nudge technology help us in ventilation weaning? Lisa McIlmurray has been working on a pilot study of nudge technology attached to a ventilator. How does this help to move patients on? What are the algorithms used in this Read more…
Change is hard….isn’t it? We spoke to Rebecca Lawton, a professor of Psychology from the University of Leeds, who is an expert in patient safety; behaviour change; improvement science; workforce engagement and wellbeing. Why is change so difficult? Who is it most difficult for? And how do we convince individuals, Read more…
First, do no harm… How much of the things we do every day are worthwhile? We all do so many interventions, but are they actually worthwhile? Some may be ineffective, some inefficient, and some may be harmful. But which is which? How do we find out whether we should, or Read more…
Calum Semple is a respiratory and infectious disease professor in Liverpool. He has been part of the governmental advice team for pandemics since before COVID. We spoke to him in advance of his talk at the 2024 PCCS conference What is the frequency of pandemics? Is the 1918 Spanish Flu Read more…
Nicola Disma, an anaesthetist in Genoa, Italy, is lead author on the European Society of Anaesthesiology and Intensive Care guidelines on airway management in neonates and infants, published in full text here. We discussed all things airway. Video laryngoscopes: useful, mandatory, or deskilling? “Normal” video blade or hyperangulated? Oxygen during Read more…
What’s the point of evidence? It’s to gain knowledge, so that we can treat our patients better. But what happens when the data is wrong, faked, misleading, or simply made up? Retraction Watch (www.retractionwatch.com, and @retractionwatch) collates retractions from journals around the world. Their database makes terrifying reading: tens of Read more…
From the 2023 PediCritiCon conference in Pune, India, I was lucky enough to chat with Bala Ramachandran from Chennai. He gave a great talk on precision medicine, its implications, and what the future may hold. What’s the difference between personalised medicine and precision medicine? How does it differ to “usual” Read more…
Much research is technical and esoteric. Some research is fundamental and answers questions we want to answer every day. Often the first is easy to do (just add a lab and equipment), but the second is really, really hard. Mark Peters and team have just published the OxyPICU trial in Read more…