Palliative Care in Children With Heart Disease Treated in an ICU

Objectives: Describe pediatric palliative care consult in children with heart disease; retrospectively apply Center to Advance Palliative Care criteria for pediatric palliative care consults; determine the impact of pediatric palliative care on end of life. Design: A retrospective single-center study. Setting: A 16-bed cardiac ICU in a university-affiliated tertiary care children’s hospital. Patients: Children (0–21 yr old) with heart disease admitted to the cardiac ICU from January 2014 to June 2017. Measurements and Main Results: Over 1,000 patients (n = 1, 389) were admitted to the cardiac ICU with 112 (8%) receiving a pediatric palliative care consultation. Patients who received a consult were different from those who did not. Patients who received pediatric palliative care were younger at first hospital admission (median 63 vs 239 d; p = 0.003), had a higher median number of complex chronic conditions at the end of first hospitalization (3 vs 1; p
Source: Pediatric Critical Care Medicine - Category: Pediatrics Tags: Feature Cardiac Intensive Care Source Type: research