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Published on: August 19, 2020
Bleeding Scales Applicable to Critically Ill Children: A Systematic Review
Marianne E Nellis1, Julie Levasseur1, Judy Stribling2
1Pediatric Critical Care Medicine, Department of Pediatrics, New York Presbyterian Hospital - Weill Cornell Medicine, New York, NY.
Insights
Validated bleeding scales are lacking for critically ill children. There is an urgent need for reliable tools to assess bleeding and outcomes in this vulnerable patient population.
Area of Science:
- Pediatric Critical Care Medicine
- Clinical Outcome Measurement
- Hemorrhage Assessment Tools
Background:
- Bleeding assessment is crucial in critically ill children.
- Current bleeding scales may not be adequately validated for this population.
- Reliable tools are needed to guide clinical decisions and research.
Purpose of the Study:
- To summarize existing bleeding scales.
- To evaluate their validation and applicability to critically ill children.
- To identify gaps in current assessment tools.
Main Methods:
- Conducted comprehensive electronic database searches (MEDLINE, EMBASE, Cochrane, Web of Science) from inception to 2017.
- Included studies with bleeding scores, measurement tools, or hemorrhage assessments.
- Reviewed 2,097 unique citations, with 20 full-text articles included.
Main Results:
- Only 39% of reviewed scales were pediatric-specific; only 12% focused on critically ill patients.
- Most scales (80%) considered the need for treatment (e.g., transfusions, surgery).
- A majority (65%) lacked reported reliability or validation against clinical outcomes.
Conclusions:
- A significant gap exists in validated bleeding scales for critically ill children.
- Existing tools often lack pediatric-specific validation and rigorous outcome assessment.
- There is an urgent need for the development and validation of reliable bleeding assessment tools for this population.
Objectives:
To summarize current bleeding scales and their validation to assess applicability to bleeding in critically ill children.
Data Sources:
We conducted electronic searches of Ovid MEDLINE, Ovid EMBASE, Cochrane Library, and Web of Science Core Collection databases from database inception to 2017.
Study Selection:
Included studies contained a bleeding score, bleeding measurement tool, or clinical measurement of hemorrhage.
Data Extraction:
We identified 2,097 unique citations; 20 full-text articles were included in the final review.
Data Synthesis:
Of the 18 studies that included subjects (two others were expert consensus definitions), seven (39%) were pediatric-only, seven (39%) were adult-only, and four (22%) included both adults and children. Nine (50%) occurred with inpatients (two studies in critical care units), seven (39%) involved outpatients and two (11%) included both inpatients and outpatients. Thirty-nine percent of the scales were developed for those with idiopathic thrombocytopenic purpura and only two (12%) described critically ill patients. The majority (80%) included need for treatment (either RBC transfusion or surgical intervention). The majority (65%) did not report measures of reliability or validation to clinical outcomes.
Conclusions:
There is a lack of validated bleeding scales to adequately assess bleeding and outcomes in critically ill children. Validated scales of bleeding are necessary and urgently needed.
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