Faculty Bibliography

We report an interesting case of a child with new-onset malignant hypertension (HTN) associated with facial paralysis. A review of the medical literature on this association and discussion of diagnostic and management aspects are included.

OBJECTIVE: To test the hypothesis that telemedicine can reliably be used for many aspects of circulatory and neurologic examinations of children admitted to a pediatric intensive care unit (PICU). STUDY DESIGN: A prospective, randomized study in a 14-bed PICU in a tertiary care, academic-affiliated institution. Eligible patients were >2 months or <19 years of age, not involved in a concurrent study, had parents/guardian able to sign an informed consent form, were not at end-of-life, and had an attending who not only deemed them medically stable, but also felt that the study would not interrupt their care. Other than the Principal Investigator, 6 pediatric intensivists and 7 pediatric critical care fellows were eligible study providers. Two physician providers were randomly assigned to perform circulatory and neurologic examinations according to the American Heart Association/Pediatric Advanced Life Support guidelines in-person and via telemedicine. Findings were recorded on a standardized data collection form and compared. RESULTS: One hundred ten data collection forms were completed. For many aspects of the circulatory and neurologic examinations, outcomes showed substantial to perfect agreement between the in-person and telemedical care providers (kappa = 0.64-1.00). However, assessments of muscle tone had a kappa = 0.23, with a kappa = 0.37 for skin color. CONCLUSIONS: Telemedicine can reliably identify normal and abnormal findings of many aspects of circulatory and neurologic examinations in PICU patients. This finding opens the door to further studies on the use of telemedicine across other disciplines.

Traumatic brain injury (TBI) may involve diverse injury mechanisms (e.g., focal impact vs. diffuse impact loading). Putative therapies developed in TBI models featuring a single injury mechanism may fail in clinical trials if the model does not fully replicate multiple injury subtypes, which may occur concomitantly in a given patient. We report development and characterization of a mixed contusion/concussion TBI model in mice using controlled cortical impact (CCI; 0.6 mm depth, 6 m/sec) and a closed head injury (CHI) model at one of two levels of injury (53 vs. 83 g weight drop from 66 in). Compared with CCI or CHI alone, sequential CCI-CHI produced additive effects on loss of consciousness (p<0.001), acute cell death (p<0.05), and 12-day lesion size (p<0.05) but not brain edema or 48-h contusion volume. Additive effects of CHI and CCI on post-injury motor (p<0.05) and cognitive (p<0.005) impairment were observed with sequential CCI-CHI (83 g). The data suggest that concussive forces, which in isolation do not induce histopathological damage, exacerbate histopathology and functional outcome after cerebral contusion. Sequential CHI-CCI may model complex injury mechanisms that occur in some patients with TBI and may prove useful for testing putative therapies.