Bubble Wrap PLUS – October 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 our guideline section, we chose a review in Pediatrics looking at phototherapy to prevent severe neonatal hyperbilirubinemia.

The authors did a technical survey and investigated the principles and application of phototherapy according to the AAP Clinical Practice Guideline. They looked at different devices available (in the USA) and their marketed indications. Their conclusions are remarkable. The efficacy of phototherapy devices varies widely because of the non-standardized use of light sources and configurations and irradiance meters. They suggest that we use accurate irradiance measurements to measure the effect. It would be interesting to know if this variation is also present in devices in other countries or continents.

In the clinical studies section, we included a study on sleep problems in toddlers.

In the current issue of the Journal of Paediatrics and Child Health, a group from Thailand investigated sleep (dys)function and associated cognitive (dys)function. Sleep problems were evaluated using a questionnaire, and executive functions were assessed using the Behavioural Rating Inventory of Executive Function, the pre-school version.  Although the sleep duration did not differ between the two groups, after correction for confounding factors, lower sleep habit scores correlated significantly with worse executive functions.

Children often spend many hours in the emergency department (ED) before being sent home or admitted. In this issue of Pediatrics, Leyenaar and colleagues reported on a trial to compare the effectiveness of direct admission to bypass their emergency departments.

They used primary and urgent care clinics as referral sources and were randomised to different pathways. The average waiting time for the first assessment was only a few minutes shorter when going through the ED. Still, treatment initiation was significantly faster (up to one hour) than admission through the ED. This referral procedure is only possible with a well-structured system and may not be feasible in all settings.

Patients who do not attend a health care appointment waste valuable time and resources, and their absence might delay their diagnosis and treatment—in this issue of the European Journal of Pediatrics,

Yi Tan and colleagues evaluated the effectiveness of text message reminders in improving paediatric patients’ adherence to their appointments through a systematic review and meta-analysis. Compared to standard care (involving non-text message reminders or no reminders), text message reminders improved appointment attendance among the paediatric population. Even though this seems easy, there are potential barriers such as financial costs, messages delivered to divorced (i.e. sometimes fighting) parents, legislative concerns (GDRP and privacy), adolescents who ignore such messages or institutional failure to keep phone records up to date,… 

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!