ABSTRACT
OBJECTIVE: Analysis of indications, weight and peroperative and postoperative complications in 32 consecutive children who underwent percutaneous endoscopic gastrostomy (PEG). DESIGN: Retrospective. SETTING: Sophia Children's Hospital, Rotterdam, The Netherlands. METHOD: Survey of medical records. RESULTS: In 26 children the indication for PEG was necessity of prolonged tube feeding on account of severe psychomotor retardation. The 6 others had no such retardation and had various indications. Mean hospital stay was 6.7 days, median 6 days. Three patients had immediate postoperative complications: two had leakage, one infection. In 22 patients there were no late complications. One patients died following status epilepticus. One patient had a late peritonitis, and two others gastroesophageal reflux severe enough to require surgical intervention. Six patients had mild long-term complications, mainly infectious. All children showed improvement of weight for length. CONCLUSION: The PEG procedure is well-tolerated, effective way of tube feeding in children, with a relatively low complication rate.
Subject(s)
Child Nutritional Physiological Phenomena , Enteral Nutrition/methods , Gastrostomy/methods , Intellectual Disability/physiopathology , Adolescent , Child , Child, Preschool , Endoscopy, Gastrointestinal , Humans , Infant , Postoperative Complications/etiology , Retrospective StudiesABSTRACT
To examine the reliability of umbilical artery pH measurements, two study designs were employed: (1) contemporaneous measurement of two adjoining segments of umbilical cords at birth (n = 40) and (2) repeat measurements at < 5, 15, 30, 45 and 60 minutes after birth in separate sections of the same cords (n = 40). The cord sections were left at room temperature. Limits of agreement of the contemporaneous pH measurements were from -0.066 to +0.066. Mean umbilical artery blood pH declined only slightly with time. Limits of agreement for delayed measurements were -0.061 to +0.031 at 15 minutes, -0.087 to +0.033 at 30 minutes, -0.090 to +0.046 at 45 minutes and -0.091 to +0.049 at 60 minutes. We therefore conclude that in both contemporaneous and interval sampling the accuracy of umbilical artery pH measurements is subject to biological variation. The 95% confidence interval for an individual umbilical artery pH measurement typically lies between -0.066 and +0.066 of the measured value.
