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PAEDIATRIC ALTERED
CONSCIOUS LEVEL GUIDELINE |
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These pages are now of historical interest
only.
All the information is summarised in the Full
Technical Document.
INTRODUCTION
A new
paediatric guideline is under development and you are more than welcome to help
in this process.
Children
who present with a decreased conscious level do so for a variety of reasons. A
recent study found that about 30 children out of every 100,000 children will
present per year in a coma not caused by trauma, and the overall mortality in
this group of children was 46% (Wong et al, 2001). With such a high mortality
rate and a multitude of causes, a guideline to help health professionals
investigate and treat children who present in this way will be very useful.
Health
professionals will need to answer key clinical questions to inform their
management decisions. The answers to these questions need to be based on the
best available medical evidence and where there is no evidence available
consensus opinions can be used to fill the gaps. The search strategies for finding
the evidence to answer these questions can be viewed through this site, as can
the formal consensus process known as the “
Recommendations
based on the evidence and consensus opinion will form the final guideline which
will be disseminated in 2005. A guideline development group has been formed to
develop this guideline and this site aims to explain the developments as they
happen. To help the guideline development group in this task please comment on
the guideline process by emailing richard.bowker@nottingham.ac.uk
and both your comments and responses to them will be posted on the comments
board (anonymously unless specified).
The
development of this guideline has been funded by The
National Reye’s Syndrome Foundation of the United Kingdom,
a registered charity (No. 288064) which was formed to provide funds for research
into the cause, treatment, cure and prevention of Reye’s syndrome and Reye-like
illnesses, to inform both the public and medical communities and to provide
support for parents whose children have suffered from these diseases.