Children with disabilities can be organ donors, contributing to the supply. Excluding these patients as organ recipients would not be fair. A new policy statement does not consider intellectual and developmental disabilities (IDD) completely irrelevant, but the authors do not consider IDD to be dispositive for listing decisions either.

The authors of a recent study found African American children who are otherwise apparently healthy are 3.43 times more likely to die within 30 days after surgery when compared with white patients.

Children present to the ED with a variety of issues ranging from benign to life-threatening. The ability to recognize potentially devastating diseases early facilitates care and ensures an optimal outcome for the child.

Prevention of respiratory syncytial virus infection is needed but challenging. New studies show some favorable effectiveness on infant outcomes with both vaccination of healthy pregnant women and passive single-dose immunization of prematurely born babies.

Responding to an identified need in the community, Children’s of Alabama in Birmingham created a Psychiatric Intake Response Center (PIRC) to prioritize mental health care for youth. Mental healthcare professionals divide their time between assessing patients who present to the emergency department with mental health concerns and providing guidance to families who call the PIRC for help.

Certain fact patterns arise repeatedly in malpractice cases involving pediatric patients presenting to the emergency department. Medical/legal experts identify and explain these patterns.

Learn some practices that can help general emergency departments defend against malpractice litigation — or prevent it in the first place.

Universal screening for suicidal ideation is an important step toward improving care quality for young patients with mental health disorders. More research is needed to determine how to optimally equip all emergency departments to manage pediatric cases.

There are some signs of progress in drug-resistant infections in pediatrics, suggesting that antibiotic stewardship efforts may be having an effect and fewer broad-spectrum agents are being used on this important patient group, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reports.