EEG in PICU

Background Pediatric acute liver failure (PALF) is still life-threatening and requires urgent care. The presence of encephalopathy is a clinical diagnosis, but it is more difficult to diagnose in children than in adults, and an electroencephalogram (EEG) can be invaluable. The role of EEG in managing the treatment of patients with PALF, other than the identification of encephalopathy, is unknown. This study aimed to investigate patients' EEGs, which may guide in choosing the most appropriate treatment in encephalopathy children...

The pediatric intensive care unit (PICU) is bright, loud, and disruptive to children. Strategies to improve the sleep of adults in the ICU have improved delirium and mortality rates. Children need more sleep than adults for active growth, healing, and development when well; this is likely true when they are critically ill. This review was performed to describe what we know in this area to date with the intent to identify future directions for research in this field. Since the 1990s, 16 articles on 14 observational trials have been published investigating the sleep on a total of 312 critically ill children and the melatonin levels of an additional 144...

STUDY OBJECTIVES: Although sleep is frequently disrupted in the pediatric intensive care unit (PICU), it's currently not possible to perform real-time sleep monitoring at the bedside. In this study, spectral band powers of electroencephalography (EEG) data are used to derive a simple index for sleep classification. METHODS: Retrospective study at Erasmus MC Sophia Children's Hospital, using hospital-based polysomnography (PSG) recordings obtained in non-critically ill children between 2017 and 2021...

OBJECTIVE: To describe the characteristics, differential diagnoses, management and outcomes of severe encephalitis in children. DESIGN: A 10-year retrospective cohort study in children admitted to a tertiary paediatric intensive care unit (PICU) with suspected encephalitis. One to 6 months' follow-up data were compared between different categories. PARTICIPANTS: Patients from 0 to 17 years of age with acute encephalopathy and one or more of fever, seizure, focal neurological findings, cerebrospinal fluid abnormalities, EEG/neuroimaging consistent with encephalitis...

OBJECTIVES: To identify the prevalence of herpes simplex encephalitis (HSE), factors influencing the duration of empirical acyclovir and frequency of acute kidney injury (AKI) in children with acute encephalitis syndrome (AES). DESIGN: Prospective observational study. SETTING: Pediatric Emergency Department and PICU of a tertiary hospital in Northern India. PATIENTS: All consecutive, eligible children between 1 month and 12 years old presenting with AES, defined as altered consciousness for greater than 24 hours (including lethargy, irritability, or a change in personality) and two or more of the following signs: 1) fever (temperature ≥ 38°C) during the current illness, 2) seizures or focal neurological signs, 3) cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) pleocytosis, 4) electroencephalogram, and/or 5) neuroimaging suggesting encephalitis, who received at least one dose of acyclovir...

The objective of this study is to describe the clinical features of young infants with apneas as a clinical sign of COVID-19. We reported the cases of 4 infants who needed respiratory support in our PICU for a severe course of COVID-19 complicated with recurrent apneas. Moreover, we conducted a review of the literature about COVID-19 and apneas in infants ≤ 2 months of corrected age. A total of 17 young infants were included. Overall, in most of the cases (88%), apnea was an initial symptom of COVID-19, and in two cases, it recurred after 3-4 weeks...

BACKGROUND: Continuous electroencephalography (cEEG) is commonly used for neuromonitoring in pediatric intensive care units (PICU); however, there are barriers to real-time interpretation of EEG data. Quantitative EEG (qEEG) transforms the EEG signal into time-compressed graphs, which can be displayed at the bedside. A survey was designed to understand current PICU qEEG use. METHODS: An electronic survey was sent to the Pediatric Neurocritical Care Research Group and Pediatric Status Epilepticus Research Group, and intensivists in 16 Canadian PICUs...

INTRODUCTION: Approximately 20%-40% of comatose children with risk factors in intensive care have electrographic-only seizures; these go unrecognised due to the absence of continuous electroencephalography (EEG) monitoring (cEEG). Utility of cEEG with high-quality assessment is currently limited due to high-resource requirements. New software analysis tools are available to facilitate bedside cEEG assessment using quantitative EEG (QEEG) trends. The primary aim of this study is to describe accuracy of interpretation of QEEG trends by paediatric intensive care unit (PICU) nurses compared with cEEG assessment by neurologist (standard clinical care) in children at risk of seizures and status epilepticus utilising diagnostic test statistics...

OBJECTIVES: To investigate neonatal electroencephalography (EEG) background activity and electrographic seizures in patients in the pediatric intensive care unit (PICU) who underwent bedside video-electroencephalography (vEEG) monitoring. METHODS: A total of 232 pediatric patients admitted or transferred to PICU that underwent vEEG monitoring were retrospectively enrolled in this study, and electrographic status epilepticus was observed after vEEG monitoring. RESULTS: The median age was 1...

Neuroprognostication in severe traumatic brain injury (sTBI) is challenging and occurs in critical care settings to determine withdrawal of life-sustaining therapies (WLST). However, formal pediatric sTBI neuroprognostication guidelines are lacking, brain death criteria vary, and dilemmas regarding WLST persist, which lead to institutional differences. We studied WLST practice and outcome in pediatric sTBI to provide insight into WLST-associated factors and survivor recovery trajectory ≥1 year post-sTBI...

BACKGROUND: Supplementary treatment options after pediatric severe traumatic brain injury (TBI) are needed to improve neurodevelopmental outcome. Evidence suggests enhancement of brain delta waves via auditory phase-targeted stimulation might support neuronal reorganization, however, this method has never been applied in analgosedated patients on the pediatric intensive care unit (PICU). Therefore, we conducted a feasibility study to investigate this approach: In a first recording phase, we examined feasibility of recording over time and in a second stimulation phase, we applied stimulation to address tolerability and efficacy...

OBJECTIVE: The aim of this study is to analyze the clinical features, neuroimaging findings and outcomes of the children admitted to our tertiary pediatric intensive care unit (PICU) due to posterior reversible encephalopathy syndrome (PRES). METHODS: This was a retrospective study where the hospital records of children admitted to PICU due to PRES between January 1, 2011 and January 1, 2021 were reviewed. RESULTS: We enrolled 14 patients with a median age of 8 years (IQR 2...

OBJECTIVES: To describe adherence to continuous electroencephalogram (cEEG) monitoring as part of a pediatric neurocritical care (PNCC) program for status epilepticus (SE). DESIGN: Retrospective review of pre- and postintervention cohorts. SETTING: A pediatric referral hospital. PATIENTS: Children admitted to the PICU for SE. INTERVENTIONS: We restructured the care delivery model to include a pediatric neurointensive care unit (neuro-ICU) and expanded the cEEG capacity...

OBJECTIVE: Epileptic seizures are relatively common in critically-ill children admitted to the pediatric intensive care unit (PICU) and thus serve as an important target for identification and treatment. Most of these seizures have no discernible clinical manifestation but still have a significant impact on morbidity and mortality. Children that are deemed at risk for seizures within the PICU are monitored using continuous-electroencephalogram (cEEG). cEEG monitoring cost is considerable and as the number of available machines is always limited, clinicians need to resort to triaging patients according to perceived risk in order to allocate resources...

Neuromonitoring has become more standardized in adult neurocritical care, but the utility of different neuromonitoring modalities in children remains debated. We aimed to describe the use of neuromonitoring in critically ill children with and without primary neurological diseases. We conducted a retrospective review of patients admitted to a 32-bed, non-cardiac PICU during a 12-month period. Neuro-imaging, electroencephalogram (EEG), cerebral oximetry (NIRS), automated pupillometry, transcranial doppler (TCD), intracranial pressure (ICP) monitoring, brain tissue oxygenation (PbtO2 ), primary diagnosis, and outcome were extracted...

BACKGROUND: The incidence and prevalence of autoimmune encephalitis (AE) is gradually increasing in pediatric patients (between the ages of 3 months and 16 years). The aim of this retrospective observational study was to investigate the clinical characteristics and short-term prognosis of children with antibody-mediated AE at Hunan Children's Hospital. METHODS: Antibody analysis of blood and/or cerebrospinal fluid was performed in suspected AE patients admitted to the Department of Neurology, Hunan Children's Hospital from June 2014 to June 2021...

Pediatric morbidity from meningitis remains considerable. Preventing complications is a major challenge to improve neurological outcome. Seizures may reveal the meningitis itself or some complications of this disease. Amplitude-integrated electroencephalography (aEEG) is gaining interest for the management of patients with acute neurological distress, beyond the neonatal age. This study aimed at evaluating the predictive value of aEEG monitoring during the acute phase in meningitis among a population of infants hospitalized in the pediatric intensive care unit (PICU), and at assessing the practicability of the technique...

OBJECTIVE: We aimed to investigate the rate of brain death (BD) determinations and organ donations (OD) in our tertiary pediatric intensive care unit (PICU), and to report the data on the demographic pattern and supplementary descriptive data on BD declarations. METHODS: The study was designed as a retrospective, single-center, descriptive cohort study. We evaluated all children who were determined to meet the criteria for BD in our tertiary PICU between January 2011 and December 2020...

BACKGROUND: Status Epilepticus is the most common non-traumatic neurologic emergency in childhood. Current algorithms prioritize the use of benzodiazepines as first line treatment followed by Levetiracetam or Valproic Acid, possibly Fosphenytoin and eventually high dose Propofol and intubation. CASE REPORT: A 9-month old girl was brought to the emergency department with a continuous seizure involving the right upper and lower extremity for 45 min prior to arrival...

Often, pediatric intensive care environments are not conducive to healing the sick. Critically ill children experience disruptions in their circadian rhythms, which can contribute to delayed recovery and poor outcomes. We aim to test the hypothesis that children managed via RESTORE Resilience ( R2 ), a nurse-implemented chronotherapeutic bundle, will experience restorative circadian rhythms compared to children receiving usual care. In this two-phased, prospective cohort study, two separate pediatric intensive care units in the United Sates will enroll a total of 20 baseline subjects followed by 40 intervention subjects, 6 months to less than 18 years of age, requiring invasive mechanical ventilation...