Effect of Body Mass Index Category on Body Surface Area Calculation in Children Undergoing Cardiac Procedures

Failure to rescue following postoperative pneumonia in pediatrics: Is there a racial disparity?

INTRODUCTION

Racial disparities in measures of health and healthcare processes are well described. Limited work exists on disparities in failure to rescue - hospital mortality following a major adverse event. Postoperative pneumonia is a serious, potentially preventable adverse event that often leads to death, i.e., failure to rescue. This study examined the association of racial grouping with failure to rescue following postoperative pneumonia.

METHODS

We utilized the National Surgical Quality Improvement Program-Pediatrics Participant Use Data File to assemble a cohort of children <18 years who underwent inpatient surgery from 2012 to 2022. We included Black and White patients who developed pneumonia following an index surgery. The primary outcome was failure to rescue, defined as mortality following postoperative pneumonia. We used logistic regression models to estimate the odds ratio and 95% confidence intervals of failure to rescue, comparing Black and White children.

RESULTS

The study cohort included 3139 children <18 years who developed pneumonia following inpatient surgery. Of those, 2333 (74.3%) were White and 806 (25.7%) were Black. Failure to rescue occurred in 117 of the children (3.7%); 82 were White (3.5%) and 35 were Black (4.3%). After adjusting for gender, age, American Society of Anesthesiologists Physical Status classification, emergent/urgent vs. elective case status, year of operation, and pre-existing comorbidities, the odds of failure to rescue for Black children with postoperative pneumonia did not differ from White children (adjusted-Odds Ratio: 1.00; 95% Confidence Interval 0.62-1.61; p-value = .992).

CONCLUSION

We found no significant difference in the odds of failure to rescue following postoperative pneumonia between Black or White children. To improve postoperative care for all children and to narrow the racial gap in postoperative mortality, future studies should continue to investigate the association of race with failure to rescue following other postoperative complications.

Prediction of Male Coronary Artery Bypass Grafting Outcomes Using Body Surface Area Weighted Left Ventricular End-diastolic Diameter: Multicenter Retrospective Cohort Study

BACKGROUND

The presence of a high left ventricular end-diastolic diameter (LVEDD) has been linked to a less favorable outcome in patients undergoing coronary artery bypass grafting (CABG) procedures. However, by taking into consideration the reference of left ventricular size and volume measurements relative to the patient's body surface area (BSA), it has been suggested that the accuracy of the predicting outcomes may be improved.

OBJECTIVE

We propose that BSA weighted LVEDD (bLVEDD) is a more accurate predictor of outcomes in patients undergoing CABG compared to simply using LVEDD alone.

METHODS

This study was a comprehensive retrospective cohort study that was conducted across multiple medical centers. The inclusion criteria for this study were patients who were admitted for treatment between October 2016 and May 2021. Only elective surgery patients were included in the study, while those undergoing emergency surgery were not considered. All participants in the study received standard care, and their clinical data were collected through the institutional registry in accordance with the guidelines set forth by the Society of Thoracic Surgeons National Adult Cardiac Database. bLVEDD was defined as LVEDD divided by BSA. The primary outcome was in-hospital all-cause mortality (30 days), and the secondary outcomes were postoperative severe adverse events, including use of extracorporeal membrane oxygenation, multiorgan failure, use of intra-aortic balloon pump, postoperative stroke, and postoperative myocardial infarction.

RESULTS

In total, 9474 patients from 5 centers under the Chinese Cardiac Surgery Registry were eligible for analysis. We found that a high LVEDD was a negative factor for male patients' mortality (odds ratio 1.44, P<.001) and secondary outcomes. For female patients, LVEDD was associated with secondary outcomes but did not reach statistical differences for morality. bLVEDD showed a strong association with postsurgery mortality (odds ratio 2.70, P<.001), and secondary outcomes changed in parallel with bLVEDD in male patients. However, bLVEDD did not reach statistical differences when fitting either mortality or severer outcomes in female patients. In male patients, the categorical bLVEDD showed high power to predict mortality (area under the curve [AUC] 0.71, P<.001) while BSA (AUC 0.62) and LVEDD (AUC 0.64) both contributed to the risk of mortality but were not as significant as bLVEDD (P<.001).

CONCLUSIONS

bLVEDD is an important predictor for male mortality in CABG, removing the bias of BSA and showing a strong capability to accurately predict mortality outcomes.

TRIAL REGISTRATION

ClinicalTrials.gov NCT02400125; https://clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/show/NCT02400125.

The Role of Pre-therapeutic 18F-FDG PET/CT in Pediatric Hemophagocytic Lymphohistiocytosis With Epstein-Barr Virus Infection

Objective

To evaluate the role of pre-therapeutic ¹⁸F-FDG PET/CT in pediatric hemophagocytic lymphohistiocytosis (HLH) with Epstein-Barr virus (EBV) infection.

Methods

This retrospective study included 29 HLH children (1–16 years) with EBV infection, who underwent pre-therapeutic ¹⁸F-FDG PET/CT from July 2018 to November 2020. Pathology results were considered as the reference standard. These patients were divided into two groups: EBV-induced malignancy-associated HLH (M-HLH, N = 9) and EBV-induced non-malignancy-associated HLH (NM-HLH, N = 20). The regions of interest (ROIs) of the liver, spleen (Sp), bone marrow (BM), lymph nodes (LN), hypermetabolic lesions, liver background (LiBG), and mediastinum (M) were drawn with software 3D-Slicer. The volumetric and metabolic parameters, including maximum standard uptake value (SUV_max), metabolic tumor volume, and total lesion glycolysis of these ROIs, clinical parameters, and laboratory parameters were compared between the two groups. The efficiency of the above parameters in predicting the treatment response and overall survival (OS) was analyzed.

Results

Receiver operating characteristic curve analysis indicated that SUV_max-lesions and SUV_max-LN/M (AUC = 0.822, 0.819, cut-off = 6.04, 5.74, respectively) performed better in differentiating M-HLH from NM-HLH. It had the best diagnostic performance when age was added with the SUV_max-LN/M (AUC = 0.933, sensitivity = 100%, specificity = 85.0%). The presence of extranodal hypermetabolic lesions in multiple organs indicated the M-HLH (P = 0.022). Older age, higher SUV_max-LN and SUV_max-lesions, and the presence of serous effusion were associated with poorer treatment response at the 2nd and 4th week (not reaching partial remission). Multivariate analysis showed that SUV_max-lesions > 7.66 and SUV_max-Sp/LiBG > 2.01 were independent prognostic factors for overall survival (P = 0.025, 0.036, respectively).

Conclusions

¹⁸F-FDG PET/CT could be a valuable technique for identifying the underlying malignancy and predicting prognosis in pediatric HLH with EBV infection. M-HLH could be considered when SUV_max-lesions > 6.04, SUV_max-LN/M > 5.74, and the presence of extranodal hypermetabolic lesions in multiple organs on ¹⁸F-FDG PET/CT. SUV_max-lesions and SUV_max-Sp/LiBG might be independent prognostic factors for OS.

Pediatric obesity and perioperative medicine

PURPOSE OF REVIEW

Childhood obesity is a public health emergency that has reached a pandemic level and imposed a massive economic burden on healthcare systems. Our objective was to provide an update on (1) challenges of obesity definition and classification in the perioperative setting, (2) challenges of perioperative patient positioning and vascular access, (3) perioperative implications of childhood obesity, (3) anesthetic medication dosing and opioid-sparing techniques in obese children, and (4) research gaps in perioperative childhood obesity research including a call to action.

RECENT FINDINGS

Despite the near axiomatic observation that obesity is a pervasive clinical problem with considerable impact on perioperative health, there have only been a handful of research into the many ramifications of childhood obesity in the perioperative setting. A nuanced understanding of the surgical and anesthetic risks associated with obesity is essential to inform patients' perioperative consultation and their parents' counseling, improve preoperative risk mitigation, and improve patients' rescue process when complications occur.

SUMMARY

Anesthesiologists and surgeons will continue to be confronted with an unprecedented number of obese or overweight children with a high risk of perioperative complications.