Speaker: Robert C.Tasker, MA, MBBS, MD, FRCP, FRCPCH
Robert C.Tasker, MA, MBBS, MD, FRCP, FRCPCH: Welcome, October 2023. My name is Robert Tasker and I'm your Editor-in-Chief of Pediatric Critical Care Medicine. A couple of quick sentences just to give you an overview of where this month is going. There's a focus in my highlighted articles on brain involvement. We have a connection section which focuses on continuity of prolonged PICU care and I'd like to spend a few words talking about my PCCM Notes. So let's start with the three highlighted articles. These are all to do with the brain and as our editorialist says, the importance of trying to unravel the intricate relationship between sepsis, multiorgan dysfunction syndrome and neurological impairment is one of the challenges that we have in critical care. The first study uses the term sepsis encephalopathy. Sanchez-Pinto and colleagues looked at their cohort of over 15,000 patients collected between 2012 and 2018 and looked at the trajectory of outcomes in phenotypes with hypoxemia and Glasgow Coma Scale score 10 to 12. The second highlighted paper uses a different terminology for the brain. Sepsis and acute disorders of consciousness. Here, Cheung and colleagues using the PHENOMS data set, we talked about that at the end of last year. 2015 to 2017, 401 patients with GCS less than 12. and looking at the consequence of that. The third paper uses a different brain entity called acquired brain injury. Here, Williams et al, from two ICUs have tried to develop a targeted approach to follow up in patients with GCS of 9 to 13. Do read all of these together and also the extra papers that I have identified in my notes. Next comes a special article from the Lucile Packard Foundation. This is focused on PICU continuity. 37 experts have gotten together and generated 17 consensus statements. These are strategies for long stay on the PICU. What's interesting to me is that this brings together the literature that we have about chronic illness and admission to PICU or complex chronic illness or medical complexity and how do we deal with continuity in these cases. Again, well worth reading. Lastly, I'd just like to finish up. There's a new piece that I've written called PCCM Notes, Methods, and Statistics. This is another piece about writing but it's relevant to everyone who reads PCCM. We're taking a new approach to how references and citations are used in all articles that are published by PCCM. And this is because of the ChatGPT era. What I hope you will see probably from next year is a more in depth approach to content of papers that have been published. Do have a look at the article, it'll be useful for trainees and all those involved with writing. So, a great month, even better month in November. So do keep reading. Thank you very much.
