Paediatric early warning score systems are used for early detection of clinical deterioration of patients in paediatric wards. Several paediatric early warning scores have been developed, but most of them are not suitable for children with cyanotic CHD who are adapted to lower arterial oxygen saturation.

The present study compared the original paediatric early warning system of the Royal College of Physicians of Ireland with a modification for children with cyanotic CHD.

Retrospective single-centre study in a paediatric cardiology intermediate care unit at a German university hospital.

The distribution of recorded values showed a significant shift towards higher score values in patients with cyanotic CHD (p < 0.001) using the original score, but not with the modification. An analysis of sensitivity and specificity for the factor “requirement of action” showed an area under the receiver operating characteristic for non-cyanotic patients of 0.908 (95% CI 0.862–0.954). For patients with cyanotic CHD, using the original score, the area under the receiver operating characteristic was reduced to 0.731 (95% CI 0.637–0.824, p = 0.001) compared to 0.862 (95% CI 0.809–0.915, p = 0.207), when the modified score was used. Using the critical threshold of scores ≥ 4 in patients with cyanotic CHD, sensitivity and specificity for the modified score was higher than for the original (sensitivity 78.8 versus 72.7%, specificity 78.2 versus 58.4%).

The modified score is a uniform scoring system for identifying clinical deterioration, which can be used in children with and without cyanotic CHD.

Survival from pulseless cardiac arrest typically is dismal. Some suggest that adding vasopressin to epinephrine as a cardiovascular stimulant can improve outcomes.

This study compares survival outcomes using epinephrine verses vasopressin and epinephrine in persons with pulseless cardiac arrest.

This is a retrospective, cohort evaluation of two resuscitative protocols (P1-epinephrine or P2-vasopressin with epinephrine) in a tiered response, community emergency medical service (EMS) with an approximately 100,000 catchment area. Cases are defined as 18 years or older determined to be in pulseless cardiac arrest. Outcomes were survival to emergency department arrival, to 24 hours, and to hospital discharge. Data were entered into Microsoft Office Excel® and processed using Analyze-it® for continuous and categorical data and Epi-Info® for odds ratios with confidence intervals.

There were 204 cases (60.3% males and 39.7% females) who met the inclusion criteria. Thirteen cases received electrical therapy only, and were dropped from analysis, leaving 191 (93.6%) who were included in the study; P1 to 85 (44.5%) and P2 to 106 (55.5%). Younger age was associated with improved survival to discharge home in both protocols, p = 0.003 (95% CI = 0.004–0.010). No difference in survival was noted at the levels of emergency department arrival OR 1.42 (95% CI = 0.73, 2.76) p = 0.26; 24 hour survival OR 0.54 (95% CI = 0.22–1.30) p = 0.133, or discharge home OR = 1.81 (95% CI = 0.49–6.88) p = 0.319.

This study in a community EMS did not demonstrate improved survival with the addition of vasopressin to epinephrine for pulseless cardiac arrest.