Bubble Wrap PLUS – July 2024

Can’t get enough of Bubble Wrap? The Bubble Wrap Plus is a monthly paediatric Journal Club reading list from Professor Jaan Toelen (University Hospitals Leuven) and Dr Anke Raaijmakers (Sydney Children’s Hospital). 

This comprehensive list is developed from 34 journals, including major and subspecialty paediatric journals. We suggest this list can help you discover relevant or interesting articles for your local journal club or allow you to keep a finger on the pulse of paediatric research.

In this month’s issue of Pediatrics, Brewster and colleagues investigated how well Google Translate and ChatGPT perform in translating discharge instructions. Patients who speak languages other than the health care professionals (English in the study) face barriers to equitable healthcare delivery. They used standardized discharge instructions for paediatric conditions that were then translated into Spanish, Brazilian Portuguese, and Haitian Creole by professional translation services, Google Translate and ChatGPT-4.0.

Surprisingly, Google Translate and ChatGPT demonstrated similar translations for Spanish and Portuguese to the professional translations. For Haitian Creole, professional translations demonstrated significantly greater adequacy, fluency, meaning, and severity scores. Machine translation platforms were comparable to professional translations for Spanish and Portuguese (more prevalent languages), but shortcomings in quality, accuracy, and preference persist for Haitian Creole (a less common language). Before using translation platforms to assist us, diverse, multilingual training data are needed to ensure safe clinical practice.

Roby and colleagues investigated paediatric concussion with different mechanisms of injury in a younger age group (5 to 12-year-olds). They divided them into sport-related concussions, recreation-related concussions, and non-sport/recreation-related concussions. Recreational and non-sports/recreational concussions were more common than sports-induced ones. The first happened with less supervision (at the time of injury) and less direct access to established concussion health care following injury.  These patients also presented more often and took longer to present to specialists.  Delays in care may lead to delayed access to targeted rehabilitation and therefore longer recovery times.

Lastly, in this month’s issue of JAMA Pediatrics, Gemmill et al. observed increased infant death rates in Texas after a ban on abortion in early pregnancy. Compared to the rest of the US, Texas faced a 12.9% increase, vs. a 1.8% increase in the rest of the US. Surprisingly, infant deaths attributable to congenital anomalies increased more in Texas (22.9% increase) but not in the rest of the US (3.1% decrease). Restrictive abortion policies may have significant unintended consequences in terms of trauma to families and medical costs because of increases in infant mortality. These findings are particularly relevant given the potential subsequent rollbacks of reproductive rights in many US states and worldwide.

You will find the list is broken down into four sections:

If we have missed out on something useful or you think other articles are absolutely worth sharing, please add them in the comments!