Adaptive immunity
• Unlike the innate immune response, the adaptive immune response is characterized by specific antigen recognition and immunologic memory. • Lymphocytes are the key cell types of the adaptive immune…
Critical illness and the microbiome
• Like all organisms, humans have evolved in concert with microbes that serve numerous physiologic and immune functions during normal development and homeostasis. • Critical illness in both children and…
Nutrition of the critically ill child
• Provision of individually tailored optimal nutrition is an important goal of pediatric critical care. • Malnutrition is prevalent in the pediatric intensive care unit (PICU) and is associated with…
Acute abdomen
• The abdomen is both a primary source of disease conditions that require care in the intensive care unit (ICU) and, frequently, a secondary source of additional pathophysiology for children…
Hepatic transplantation
Pearls • Liver transplantation (LT) has become the standard of care for children with end-stage or metabolic liver disease, acute liver failure, and unresectable liver tumors, with most common indication…
Acute liver failure
• Pediatric acute liver failure represents a large number of heterogenous etiologies. • Effective diagnosis requires a systemic approach; however, despite thorough workup, in a large proportion of cases, cause…
Hemoglobinopathies
• The pathophysiology of sickle cell disease is multifactorial, involving hemoglobin polymerization, oxidative damage to cell membrane proteins, white blood cell activation and inflammation, activation of the clotting cascade, and…
Disorders and diseases of the gastrointestinal system
• So much reliance is placed on electronic monitoring of patients that physicians are often tempted to perform only a cursory examination or go days without laying hands on the…
Coagulation and coagulopathy
• Traditionally, coagulation has been presented as a set of discrete “intrinsic,” “extrinsic,” and “common” pathways, but this view fails to include the many interactions between pathways, any of the…
Gastrointestinal structure and function
Pearls • The alimentary tract is responsible for mechanical and enzymatic degradation of nutrients, absorption of biochemical substrates, hormone regulation of substrate flow, separation of the external from internal environments,…
