The Practicalities of Croup Management in the Community

This post is in response to a very specific question from a local GP. The question wasn't about recognising croup or even about the best evidence based treatment.  Recognising croup is fairly straightforward. There is pretty much consensus on the best management of croup. The question was about the practicalities.

The evidence for the ideal management of croup has given us a fairly straightforward and reasonably robust answer: a single 0.15mg/kg dose of oral dexamethasone.  Sounds simple doesn't it?  The difficulty is that a single dose is actually quite problematic from a pharmacy point of view. As a result the decision isn't always about the best available evidence.  It might also be about the best available medication and formulation.  To determine the answer to this question, we need to go back a couple of steps.

Croup is a clinical presentation involving barking cough, with or without stridor and respiratory distress.  This usually occurs in a relatively well child, though they will have the symptoms of a viral upper respiratory tract infection.  Like so many presentations in childhood, the underlying cause is a viral illness but the problem is due to the effect or response to the virus.  In the case of croup, that effect is upper airway inflammation and swelling.

When should croup be treated?

Croup is usually classified into mild, moderate or severe.  This can be done with or without a croup score.  While it is a minor oversimplification of what happens next, the likelihood is that severe croup will be treated with steroids and often admitted to hospital while moderate croup will usually be treated with steroids and discharged home after a period of observation.

It is the management of mild croup which often generates the most discussion.  The first question is whether it should be treated at all.  There is evidence that treating mild croup with corticosteroids (1) reduces symptoms.  There is the suggestion that it is safer to treat mild croup in that there is a reduction in time spent in hospital and reduced readmission rate for those that are treated.  However there is no specific evidence that not treating mild croup leads to an increased risk of severe or life threatening croup.  This leads some clinicians to the conclusion that if a child has a barking cough but no stridor or respiratory distress, they prefer to provide safety-netting advice and reassess if the child develops new signs.

How should croup be treated?

There is also evidence regarding the most effective steroid treatment for croup in children.  Oral dexamethasone outperforms oral prednisolone.  Both oral treatments outperform nebulised budesonide.  The suspicion is that dexamethasone outperforms prednisolone because it is better tolerated.  It's difficult for a medication to be effective if it's just been puked onto the floor.

If that's all so well evidence based, what's the problem?  Lets's get on with giving them all dexamethasone 0.15mg/kg. The problem with this is that is that dexamethasone liquid has done itself out of a job.

Dexamethasone is given as a single dose in the vast majority of cases.  The evidence shows that this works well, quickly (2) and with an effect which is sustained over several days.  It is quite potent, so small doses are effective.  These factors, combined with an unpredictable demand and a relatively short shelf life make dexamethasone liquid something that doesn't make business sense for pharmacies to stock.

I recently asked the twitter community about what they had available and while many did have dexamethasone liquid, it certainly wasn't routinely available.  The question also sparked a smattering of stories from people who had been sent from place to place looking for one that had some dexamethasone available.

This then presents a dilemma for the clinician in the community.  Do you prescribe the best tolerated and most effective treatment and take the risk that it will be unavailable?  Do you prescribe an alternative (soluble prednisolone) that is known to be slightly less effective and less well tolerated on the grounds that a medication can only be effective if it's actually been given?

There is also an opportunity to be proactive about the issue.  You could get a member of your team to contact the local pharmacies and ask if any of them do stock liquid dexamethasone.  If not, perhaps one would in which case they would be where you sent your children with croup for their treatment.

On a larger scale, primary care groups (e.g. Clinical commissioning groups in the UK) could coordinate something so that each locality has a pharmacy that stocks liquid dexamethasone.

Another way of looking at it is that there is a vicious cycle to break.  Because dexamethasone is not always available, not everyone provides it.  Because it is not prescribed often enough, it is not always stocked by pharmacists.  More prescribing of dexamethasone should make it more likely that dexamethasone will be stocked.

It is possible that liquid dexamethasone will become a more commonly prescribed medication since it has recently been suggested that it is as effective as prednisolone for childhood wheeze. (3)

What about age banding and using soluble dexamethasone?

Dexamethasone has a large therapeutic window.  The current recommended dose of 0.15mg/kg is a quarter of the dose of 0.6mg/kg which was previously the most often used dose.

This is good because age banding doses is very difficult.  A four year old can be anything from 13-22kg based on the 9th-91st centiles of the WHO growth charts.  Knowing the age is therefore nowhere near as good as having an actual weight.  Obtaining a child's weight does not require any special equipment.  If a child will not stand on a set of scales, simply weigh an adult carrying the child and without holding the child.  The difference is the child's weight.

If using Using the 9th-91st weight centiles and aiming for a dose of 0.15-0.3mg/kg gives the following results:

The ideal is definitely to have a weight and to have a liquid suspension available that would allow the precise dose of 0.15mg/kg to be given.  However, when thinking about a plan B, it seems a shame to go to Prednisolone which is known to be less effective, has more side effects and can only be given in aliquots of 5mg.  Why not do the same with dexamethasone, even if it does mean that the dose may be over in some cases?  Again, the therapeutic window of dexamethasone allows this to be possible.

Although liquid dexamethasone is not always on the shelves of the local pharmacy, it probably should be and possibly would be if it was more often used and the pharmacist knew that the bottle would get used.

Edward Snelson

Pharmacoeconomist of the year 2020

@sailordoctor

Disclaimer - If treatments are better but do not make sense financially, children should have to pay for that themselves.  If necessary, there are some coal mines near me that could be reopened, giving the children an opportunity to earn the money to pay for all the wasted dexamethasone that they are responsible for.

References

1. Russell KF, Liang Y, O’Gorman K, Johnson DW, Klassen TP, Glucocorticoids for croup (Review), 2012, Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews
2. Bjornson C. and Johnson D, Croup in the paediatric emergency department, Paediatr Child Health. 2007 Jul; 12(6): 473–477.
3. Creasey N G252(P) Dexamethasone as an alternative to prednisolone for children with wheeze: A review of the literature Archives of Disease in Childhood 2016;101:A137-A138.

Don’t say, "Eat healthily." Say. "Eat differently."

It’s highly likely that at some point you have had a conversation with a parent or child about the dietary changes that a child needs to make if they have constipation.  This discussion is fraught with difficulties.  Hands up if you’ve ever heard any of the following:

• My child eats healthily.
• Are you saying that I don’t give my child healthy food?
• I can’t make him eat anything?
• My child is just a fussy eater.

Sometimes it feels like we are pushing water uphill when we’re trying to explain the importance of diet and fluid intake.  The NICE guidelines for management of childhood constipation (1) de-emphasised the dietary part of resolving the problem.  That is not because diet is unimportant.  It is because dietary changes alone are not seen to be adequate and it is necessary to return normality through the use of macrogol laxatives.  When I ask people why they think constipation is so common in children, they often say that it is because children eat badly.  That may be a factor but the main reason that children become constipated is because they are children.  They have poor visceral awareness, no understanding of what their stools and bowel habit should be, and their behavioural response to the problem worsens the situation.  “It hurts when I poo.  I know, I’ll stop pooing!”

Although macrogol laxatives may be an essential part of the solution, dietary change is still important since management of idiopathic childhood constipation is a game of two halves.

So, why is it so difficult to address the lifestyle changes that are so key to success?  There are several reasons.

The first issue is to do with what is normal.  Parents and children alike only have themselves and those close to them as a reference for what is normal.  It’s hardly an ideal sample, especially when by definition at least one of the people in the reference set has constipation.  Similarly, they will look around themselves when asking themselves what is a normal diet.  As a comparison, ask yourself “What is the normal number of cars for a family of five to have?”  If you look at the globally statistical answer, the answer is zero cars.  Most of us would think about the families in our street or social sphere, not considering the bigger picture.

That’s fine though, because we’re not asking people to feed their child normally, we’re asking them to give their child a healthy diet.  That’s right isn’t it?  It’s technically true, but I think that practically and socially, it is the wrong message.

This is because the second difficulty is that the diet discussion is liable to provoke negative feelings.  As soon as you talk about healthy eating, people become defensive.  They may not vocalise it but that is how they are likely to feel.  There are really only two possibilities.  The first possibility is that they believe that the diet offered to the child is already healthy enough.  The message that the child's diet is not healthy is likely to be perceived as critical, which in turn will sabotage the impact of the message.  The second possibility is that they already know that they are giving an unhealthy diet to the child.  Talking about healthy eating is probably going to ignite feeling of guilt and inadequacy, also getting in the way of the ability to move forward.

Getting the language that we use in this important part of the consultation has the potential to radically alter patient and parent buy-in to what you are recommending.  I would suggest that you try changing just one word.  Instead of talking about eating healthily, talk about eating differently.  I usually explain that no matter what a child’s diet is like, there are always changes that can be made that will help them stay free of constipation.  Let’s think about what changes you could make, since constipation is such a horrible problem that every change that has an effect is great progress.

Here are some things that you could look at with the next constipated child you see:

Achievable changes

• Cutting out sugary drinks
• Reducing sweet snacks and starchy snacks (chips and crisps)

Easy wins

• Change breakfast cereal to something high fibre
• Ask school to allow a water bottle at all times and a permissive approach to toilet access

Practical tips

• Don't use sweet and starchy snacks as a reward or treat, even for eating healthy food
• Don't have the constipation food in the house at all. Instead have fruit out and permanently available

Empowerment

• Give parents permission to not feed the child. If the child has been offered a healthy meal and they refuse it, don't offer them an alternative. Take the food away and let them know that they can have it back if they change their mind.
• Tell the family that everyone finds it hard to make changes.  Because constipation is a long term problem, every small change can have a big effect.

Prescribing the laxative is the easy part. Making changes that will have a long term effect is much harder.  It's important that the family understands that we know how challenging it is.  It's also important that they know that we are not asking them to change from unhealthy to healthy.  Diet is not binary. What we do need is positive change.  It's time for the child to eat differently.

Edward Snelson
Definitely different
@sailordoctor

Disclaimer: I have to admit that my kids never got a second crack at their food because I always ate it if they wouldn't.  I'm sure that's fine.  It is fine isn't it?

Reference

1. Constipation in children and young people: diagnosis and management, [CG99]. NICE, 2017

You Better Think! - A three dimensional guideline for recognising the unusual diagnosis in the ill child (including Kawasaki disease)

When assessing ill children, it is easy to presume that the problem is an uncomplicated viral infection.  Most of the time it is.  The odds are severely stacked against a more significant diagnosis to the extent that it is easy to become overly presumptive.  This, combined with the fact that a simple and benign illness will share many features with a rare or dangerous illness means that spotting the unusual or harmful diagnosis is very challenging indeed.

Much of the work done on congitive and diagnostic error takes the errors and then works backwards.  For a long time there have been reports on the number of deaths in healthcare that are related to error. (1)  These are reverse-engineered and start from the point of the problem.  People died - what is the evidence that there was any flaws in the care/ diagnosis/ treatment?  This is very different from the alternative approach of:  People had a healthcare episode- what happened next?

Outcome based stats are dangerous in that respect.  If you have 10% more adverse events than your colleagues but see 50% more patients (because you're awesome at your job) then please come and work with me.  You might flag up as a dangerous clinician if someone looks purely at incidents rather than the big picture.

I think that the most effective clinicians are those capable of recognising well children and capable of changing gear when something is unusual.  This is sometimes referred to as type 1 and type 2 thinking as per the model descibed by Croskerry. (2)

Using this model, we are most efficient when we are thinking inuitively and making gut feel decisions (type 1 thinking) and most effective at making the more complex diagnoses and managing the most dangerous scenarios when we are more considered and thorough (type 2 thinking).

Let's use this example to consider a child with non specific symptoms such as fever, rash, lymphademopathy and pharyngitis.  The reasonable but also dangerous assumption is that the child has an uncomplicated viral illness.  The possibility of another outcome is small but the consequences of missing an alternative diagnosis are great.  So, we need to use type 1 thinking to be efficient and be prepared to go into type 2 thinking when needed.

The obvious questions are then, what am I looking for and when do I look for it?  Guidelines on the subjects of febrile children, URTI in children and recognising complications such as sepsis tend to be written as if the problem was one dimensional or that the same guideline could be used in every circumstance.  This is one of the reasons that guidelines can sometimes frustrate.  Clinicians don't think that way, so it jars when a "fits all sizes" guideline over-simplifies such a complex process.

Here's an example of something that is useful but fairly simplistic.

This tells us what normal and abnormal look like.  It does very little to tellus what it all means.  Stopping here would be fine if we are just going to tell people when to refer or not.  To do that safely, such guidance will invitably err on the side of caution.

What it fails to do is to address what may be causing the red flags or atypical findings.  While a diagnosis is not necessesary in order to make a decision to refer, having a suspected diagnosis helps us to get the right child to the right place at the right time.

Lets take two of the possible complex and dangerous diagnoses as examples.  A child has a febrile illness with conjunctivitis, phayngitis, swollen lymph nodes, a rash and is pretty miserable.  Good to know.  If I told you that the onset of symptoms was within the past 24hrs, would you consider Kawasaki disease? No.  If I told you that it was day 6 of the illness and that for the past 3 days the child was neither better nor worse would you think that the diagnosis was likely to be acute sepsis? No, but can we get a guideline to help us get there?

Since it is a factor in our decision making, we could add in the dimension of time and disease progression to our guideline.  If we did that I think that it could look something like this:

Even adding this dimension doesn't fulfil our need for something which maps to our way of thinking.  We now have the bit that focuses on the child in front of us and the bit that takes into account the real world where patients present in different ways, but many guidelines fail to take into account the fact that different diseases behave differently.  Worse than that, the differences can be subtle.

Guidelines often struggle to deal with the fact that medicine is a complicated subject.  Do you write a guideline for a clinical scenario (e.g. febrile child)?  If so, you need to include every possible cause and when to think of it.  Do you write your guideline about a specific disease (e.g. Kawasaki disease)?  If so, how will people know when to use the guideline?  If they have looked it up, they are 90% of the way there and the guideline is going to be more useful as confirmation and treament advice.

For these reasons, guidelines will never be a substitute for the need for clinical knowledge and understanding.  Our child with non-specific symptoms guideline needs to have another layer - specific diagnoses, what they look like and when to consider them.

We need guidelines to be both simple in order to be practical and complex because nothing is simple.  We need them to be based on real-world clinical practice and to be honest about the uncertainties inherrent to that.

The short answer to the child with non-specific symptoms?  Anything is possible, including Kawasaki disease.  Early recognition of Kawasaki disease is important as treatment will reduce complications.  So, you better think.  In fact, because type 1 thinking will do very nicely most of the time, but not all of the time, you better think think.

Edward Snelson
Occasional overthinker
@sailordoctor

Disclaimer: Over and under-thinking are both perfectly acceptable in the right circumstances.

References

1. Kohn LT, Corrigan JM, Donaldson MS. To err is human: building a safer health system.National Academies Press, 1999.
2. Croskerry P. A universal model of diagnostic reasoning, Acad Med. 2009 Aug

Paediatric Examination by the Book - (Easter egg- When to measure head circumference in a child and what it means)

You know that book that you had when you were learning how to do a clinical examination?  Even books have a teaching style.  Mine was like an old school maths professor.  It taught me that there is only one correct answer and often only one correct way to get to the answer.  And stop doodling Snelson!

If I had owned a paediatric examination text I imagine it would have been more like a literature teacher.  I'm imagining Robin Williams in Dead Poet's Society.  It would teach me that you're never going to approach the same problem the same way twice, and you will probably even find that the answer changes.  Who would like a chocolate?

Having moved from primary to secondary care environments has been an interesting experience.  I recall my first awakening to the differences between two approaches to examination when many years ago I saw a young person with earache.  I was a newly appointed paediatric trainee, but having recently left General Practice I was well accustomed to such presentations.  For reasons I cannot recall, I discussed the case with a consultant and found myself being asked about the systemic examination.  I then had a genuinely useful discussion about what constitutes a full examination.  I had done a detailed throat, ear and neck examination but had absolutely no idea what this young person's spleen was doing that day.  Discuss...

In paediatrics there is no such thing as a routine examination.  This is for several reasons.  Having a routine only works if the same approach works regardless of age or cooperation of the child.  It doesn't.  I am sometimes asked by medical students whether they should be palpating the trachea or percussing the chest of a child.  The obtuse answer is that you should do these things when they are useful and practical.  Often they are not.  If they are, do it.

In any case, examination is normally tailored to the situation.  If a child presents with a finger injury, I presume that the GMC will let me off if I don't check to see if the child has developed a cardiac complication.  Paediatrics is a speciality that quickly teaches you not to think in terms of routine.  Children may have their own opinions about what is about to happen and you often find yourself asking whether something is worth the battle.

General Practitioners have made an art form of the focused examination.  The way that this works is that by the time an examination takes place, the clinician has heard the history and thought about the possible causes of the symptoms in that patient, given their age and past medical history.  What is examined is made up of a selection of what that clinician needs to support or refute each differential diagnosis.

This way of working is very different to the way that hospital medics tend to approach the same problem.  The default in secondary care tends to be a full systemic examination (if that is a thing) in all cases, injury not withstanding.  Each approach has strengths and weaknesses.




























The best approach is probably a combination of the two.  Having a minimum general examination is of value as is the ability to tailor your examination to the patient and the presentation.  There are some elements of examination which are just not part of most peoples routines.  Whatever is left off the "do it every time" list, you need to know and remember when to do it as part of the focused element of an examination.

Let's look at head circumference as an example of something that is routine for some clinicians in secondary care paediatrics but not for most clinicians in primary care or emergency medicine.

How to measure head circumference

Picture credit: https://ftjmikesouth.wordpress.com/

As long as it is done properly, with the correct equipment, measuring head circumference is easy and a more reliable growth parameter than length in babies.  Like any growth parameter, the recorded value is of little use without context.

Head circumference is usually measured either as part of routine monitoring of growth or as part of the assessment of an infant or toddle who has presented with a problem.  In either case, the interpretation of the measurement needs to be in context of a clinical assessment.  The most important elements of this are feeding history, concerns about growth, developmental assessment and neurological examination.

What constitutes abnormal head circumference?

The Great Ormond Street Guide to head circumference (1) suggests the following criteria as abnormal:

• The child’s head circumference measurement indicates excessive or limited growth. 
• Their head is an abnormal shape or size (eg if the measurement falls outside 99.6th or 0.4th centile on the chart. 
• The head circumference is >2 centile lines above or below their height or length measurement. 

What causes abnormal head circumference?

In many cases, HC outside of the 98th or 2nd centile (or where it is disproportionate) is constitutional.  That is to say that it is genetic but without underlying abnormality.  Just as some people are taller or shorter, some people have bigger or smaller heads.  In these cases, there is no other abnormality (including development) and the measurement usually closely follows a centile line.

When do I need to check a head circumference?

Well, if you work in secondary care paediatrics, you may well find that you are supposed to be checking it on all your patients under a certain age.  If that's not you then these are some of the common indications to check:

• Noticeably large or small head
• Growth problems
• Feeding problems
• Vomiting infants
• Any history of symptoms or event with a possible neurological cause (including BRUE/ALTE)
• Developmental concerns or impairment
• Asymetrical head shape
• Child with congenital abnormality of any kind

Why vomiting infants?  It's rare as anything can be but brain tumours can present in babies as vomiting.  Of course, because it is such rare pathology, it is rarely considered early.  Although it is not going to identify a problem very often, checking HC in these babies is harmless and could help to make a diagnosis earlier.

What about the asymmetrical heads?  Positional plagiocephaly is a benign moulding of the skull which is now very commonly seen in infants.

Picture credit: Gzzz https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Plagiocephalie.JPG

There was a sharp rise in the incidence of plagiocephaly after the "Back to Sleep" campaign advised to only allow babies to sleep on their backs until old enough to roll over.  This change had a huge impact on the number of cot deaths but it meant that more babies had flattening of the back of their heads, or an asymmetry caused by a tendency to look to one side.

There has been much debate about plagiocephaly treatment but the majority of experts without conflict of interest agree that this is a benign condition (no neurological effects) which tends to improve, if not always completely resolve, as the infant becomes a toddler.

Benign though it is, positional plagiocephaly is common enough to create a risk that craniosynostosis (plagiocephaly's evil twin) might be missed.  Avoid that pitfall by measuring and monitoring the head circumference.  Also check for a ridged suture and a misshaped or small fontanelle.

After making sure that the shape is not due to craniosynostosis, parents can be advised to

• Give the baby time on their tummy when awake
• Change the position of interesting things around the cot.  Alternatively, place the baby's head at the opposite end of the cot on alternate days.
• Alternate the side the baby is held when feeding and carrying
• Consider using a sling to carry the baby instead of being flat in a pram.

But what about the spleen?  Somehow it just doesn't feature in the assessment of positional deformational plagiocephaly as long as craniosynostosis has been ruled out.  What does the book say?  Well, that is a question worth discussing with your literature teacher.

Edward Snelson
Literally not a teacher
@sailordoctor

Disclaimer: I've just realised- I was better at maths than literature.  Ignore everything I've said.  Clearly I'm in the wrong speciality.

References

1. Head circumference: measuring a child, Great Ormond Street Hospital online, downloaded from https://www.gosh.nhs.uk/health-professionals/clinical-guidelines/head-circumference-measuring-child on 24/7/2018

I'm On Your Side - How to stop the URTI-antibiotic discussion becoming an ordeal

The antibiotic debate is a big one for several good reasons.  One of those reasons is that times have changed and change can be challenging.  Antibiotics were used liberally by previous generations of clinicians.  We and our patients now find ourselves in a world where antibiotics are being used less often.  This culture change is a major contributor to the conflict that arises due to expectation of antibiotics as a treatment for sore throats and painful ears in young children.

The good news is that if you are prescribing fewer antibiotics then you are part of a growing trend.  In the UK and many other countries, antibiotics prescribing rates have fallen over the past few years.  This means a lot more children are benefiting from symptomatic treatment without the added side effects of antibiotics.  So far the evidence is that this reduction has not been the cause of a rise in bacterial complications such as peritonsillar abscess and rheumatic fever.(1)

If you work in a country with a low incidence of complications of streptococcal infections, that tells you more about the pathogenicity of your local bacteria than about your prescribing rates.  We therefore greatly rely on our Public Health team to facilitate the safety of the no-antibiotic approach to managing URTI/AOM/tonsillitis.  The Public Health team monitors the rates of complications of streptococcal infection and alerts you when there is a more pathological strain of strep and will make recommendations regarding temporary changes in prescribing practices.

It's great to know that Public Health have our backs, but it's a little complicated to explain to patients and parents in the time restrictions of a consultation.  Explaining the rationale for avoiding antibiotics for sore throats and ears can be tricky.  While many of of us are finding that it is problematic less often than it used to be, it is still one of the most important skills that we should have.  The question is, what can we do to make it likely that this discussion goes well and goes quickly?

The first thing to do is make sure that we're coming at this from the point of view of the best interests of the child.  I understand the need for antibiotic guardianship but quite frankly when it comes to each clinical encounter, I'm always going to choose what will be best for my patient.  If this is what is driving our avoidance of antibiotics then the parents will hopefully sense that we want what they want -their child to be as well as possible as soon as possible.  What this child centred approach achieves is that we then have the right attitude towards the subject of antibiotics.  We don't come across as having a hidden agenda.  It's all about the child and wee hope that parents will respond well to that.

When we have the discussion it is important to be considered when choosing our words.  If we talk about "not needing" antibiotics, it might come across as them not having fulfilled the criteria for what they see as the ultimate treatment.  Instead, talk in terms of antibiotics not helping.

It is fairly standard at this point to mention the side effects of antibiotics.  I don't tend to mention allergic reactions, partly because they are not that common and partly because we are trying to get away from parents thinking that everything that happens while taking antibiotics is an allergic reaction.  What I do emphasise is that common side effects are abdominal pain, vomiting and diarrhoea.  I make sure that the parents know that the main reason for wanting to avoid antibiotics is that I don't want to do that to the child and I don't want to make life harder for the parents.

Because most people don't seek a medical opinion about what not to do, this is the ideal time to discuss what does work.  Analgesia is key and parents will sometimes need encouragement in this regard.  One thing that causes much confusion is the issue of what the medicine is for.  There has been an unhealthy emphasis on controlling temperature which sometimes means that paracetamol (acetominophen) and ibuprofen are not used as analgesia when the child is afebrile but refusing to drink.

This is all important information and yet at the same time it is way too much information for a parent.  In many ways, the complexity of the information is part of what perpetuates the overuse of antibiotics.  It is far simpler for the parents and the clinician to simply say, "Your child needs antibiotics."  Unfortunately this is the illusion of simplicity.

So what we need are strategies to simplify the complicated. A leaflet is a very good way to achieve this.  We know what the questions that most people tend to ask, so why not give them some answers?  Here is a simple leaflet, in a question and answer format:

You could even start the process in the waiting room.  A poster that gives a bit of context might soften the ground for the discussion to be allowed to focus on more important things.

If you would like access to either the leaflet or the poster then please let me know and I can give you a fully editable copy.  You will need to register a free account at canva.com  When you have done that, either send me a direct message via social media or post a comment at the end of this blog.  (You don't need to worry about anyone seeing the comment.  I get to review all comments before they are published and if you start your comment with "not for publishing" I will keep it for my eyes only.)  Give me your email address that you used to register the canva.com account and I will share the templates of the leaflets or poster if that is of use to you.  You can then use these to edit and personalise.  

There are lots of leaflets, posters and websites available.  You should use them both to inform and to simplify.  My view is that they should be basic but contain the important information.

Finally, make sure that the parents know that they need to be looking out for signs of secondary infection and sepsis.  Complications of URTI are thankfully low where I practice but we should all be thinking of URTI as pre-sepsis.  I think that this safety-netting discussion can actually be used to support  the no-antibiotic element of the consultation.  Parents need to know that the clinician realises that their child is genuinely ill.  For that reason, we should avoid the phrase "just a virus".  It may be meant as reassurance but is often perceived as dismissive.  By completing the consultation with and explanation of signs of complicated URTI and when to re-attend we are helping the parent to see that we have taken the child's illness seriously.

Edward Snelson
Very Serious Doctor
@sailordoctor

Disclaimer:  The online content of this blog may have been corrupted by pixies and as such the responsibility for anything that turns out to be wrong sits with the Fairy King.

Reference

1. Sharland M, et al, Antibiotic prescribing in general practice and hospital admissions for peritonsillar abscess, mastoiditis, and rheumatic fever in children: time trend analysis, BMJ 2005;331:328

Decision Fatigue and What to Do About It - When to Use Antibiotics for URTI, AOM and Tonsillitis in Children

Recently I was speaking to a GP colleague about the ways to protect oneself from decision fatigue.  Decision fatigue is a serious issue for anyone in a high volume, high turnover medical job.  He had some great insights into the problem and the solutions.

What are the effects of decision fatigue?  In the short term, your decision making ability gradually declines.  In the long term there is a risk of burnout.  From your patient’s point of view, your fatigue could mean that because you have already made too many decisions, you will not make the right decision when it really matters.  It is possible that this could lead to harm to a  patient.  Decision fatigue affects our ability to show compassion or provide patient centred care.  Subconsciously we protect ourselves from too many decisions by caring less and being more directive.

My GP friend’s solution to all of this was elegantly simple: make fewer decisions.  His rationale was this: there is only so much that we can give and we need to choose when to use our decision making energy.  If decision making is a finite resource then to use it indiscriminately is could even be seen as irresponsible.

So, how do you choose what to stop deciding?  Well, I would start with a commonly occurring dilemma that creates a great deal of uncertainty.  How about antibiotics for sore throats and ears in children?

You will notice I don’t talk about tonsillitis, URTI or otitis media.  These terms all imply an aetiology.  That is a presumption that is completely misleading.  Tonsillitis may be viral and red throat without exudate may be streptococcal.  The truth is that we don’t have a reliable way of discriminating between viral and bacterial aetiology when we examine throats and ears.  So we can't know who to give antibiotics to.  Rather than exhausting ourselves trying to get it right, perhaps we should just stop, but is that safe and justifiable? I am not the first person to ask that question. (1)

The decision that we are all faced with, to antibiotic or not-antibiotic, has to have a valid goal.  So the next question has to be, “What is the benefit in giving antibiotics?”

Do we give antibiotics to prevent complications?  In the UK this is not the case.  The evidence is very much against a need to give antibiotics as a way of preventing complications of URTI.  Antibiotic prescribing rates are falling and yet there is no crisis caused by increased numbers of invasive infection or the sequelae of streptococcal infection.(2)  Logically, if there was a quantifiable risk of complications related to reduced antibiotic prescribing, we would all have to justify each decision not to prescribe.  As previously mentioned, there is no reliable discriminator, so shouldn’t we be hearing from the public health authorities that we need to be more proactive in our antibiotic prescribing.  That’s not the message we are getting at all.  Why?  Because prescribing antibiotics for sore throats and sore ears in children (in a country with a low prevalence of complications such as rheumatic fever) is not part of a strategy for prevention of secondary infection, invasive infection, sepsis or any other complication.(3)

Should we be giving antibiotics to control symptoms?  Let’s look at that as a reason to prescribe antibiotics.  What are the facts?

• The odds of antibiotics helping the symptoms of any one child are low.  The actual number varies by age, study and whether we are talking about ear or throat symptoms but they are all in the same region.  The odds of benefit are in the region of 10-20%.  
• Decision tools such as Centor and FeverPain are designed to improve the odds that antibiotics will help symptoms but there are  major problems with these aids.  Firstly, they are not validated in the younger children who account most of the presentations of sore ears and sore throats.  Secondly, these tools imply a binary outcome.  If you score above a certain number, antibiotics will help right?  Wrong.  A high score means slightly less awful odds that antibiotics will help.  Again, that is only validated if your patient is an older child. (4,5)
• Rapid antigen testing has been validated as a way of reducing antibiotic prescribing but has not been shown to have a high sensitivity from the point of view of directing treatment to where it is effective.  These two things are very different. (6)
• There is a significant harm done by antibiotics in children.  Depending on the antibiotic and the study, the odds of making a child unwell (vomiting, abdominal pain, diarrhoea) with an antibiotic is 5-10%.  

So where have we heard 10% before.  Wasn’t it something to do with odds of benefit?  What would a statistician say if they looked at the odds of benefit and the odds of harm and saw that they overlapped.  In all truthfulness I couldn’t stay awake for the full answer but the gist was that there’s not a lot of point in such a treatment being used as a way to manage symptoms.

Finally, here are two things that make a nonsense of the whole question.

1. Children often refuse the antibiotics we give them.  Phenoxymethyl penicillin in particular is disgusting and children tend to be quite discerning in their medicine preferences.  Often the outcome of a difficult decision over whether to give antibiotics is later made meaningless as the child decides for all involved that the antibiotics are not going to happen.  The parent, remembering that it was a choice rather than a must-do usually gives up the fight.
2. The issue of antibiotics for tonsillitis and otitis media fails an important test: Snelson's Safeguarding Test.  It goes like this:  A parent brings a 2 year old to you with a fever and a cough.  You see exudate on the tonsils and are about to prescribe penicillin.  The parent says that they prefer not to treat their child with antibiotics.  You have confidently ruled out sepsis, meningitis and pneumonia.  What are you going to do? Get a court order to force the parent to give the antibiotics?  Refer the child to social services?  I don't think so.

So if the parents and the child are allowed to refuse antibiotics for sore throats and ears, how important can they be?  We wouldn't allow these barriers to get in the way if the child's life was at risk or even if the child was going to suffer as a result of non-treatment.  This way of looking at it is a good way of identifying the children who should be having antibiotics:

• Children with severe symptoms despite maximal analgesia
• Children with complications of URTI (such as infected lymph nodes)
• Scarlet fever (typical rash and oral inflammation alongside pharyngitis/tonsillitis and febrile illness) implies a more pathological strain of steptococcal infection
• Children with prolonged symptoms e.g. no signs of improvement after five days of illness

So next time you see a child with URTI, ask yourself, could I insist that this child should have antibiotics?  If not, save yourself a decision.  You know it makes sense.  All we have to do is convince the parents that this is the right thing to do.  (more on that very soon)

Edward Snelson
Vacilatologist
@sailordoctor

Disclaimer: I was replaced by a robot three years ago.

References

1. Morton P. Should we treat strep throat with antibiotics? Canadian Family Physician. 2007;53(8):1299.
2. Kvaerner KJ, Bentdal Y, Karevold G., Acute mastoiditis in Norway: no evidence for an increase, Int J Pediatr Otorhinolaryngol. 2007 Oct;71(10):1579-83. Epub 2007 Aug 20.
3. NICE, Sore Throat (acute): Antimicrobial Prescribing, NG84, January 2018
4. Little Paul, Hobbs F D Richard, Moore Michael, Mant David, Williamson Ian, McNulty Cliodna et al. Clinical score and rapid antigen detection test to guide antibiotic use for sore throats: randomised controlled trial of PRISM (primary care streptococcal management) BMJ 2013; 347 :f5806
5. Roggen I, van Berlaer G, Gordts F, et al Centor criteria in children in a paediatric emergency department: for what it is worth BMJ Open 2013;3:e002712. doi: 10.1136/bmjopen-2013-002712
6. Little Paul, Hobbs F D Richard, Moore Michael, Mant David, Williamson Ian, McNulty Cliodna et al. Clinical score and rapid antigen detection test to guide antibiotic use for sore throats: randomised controlled trial of PRISM (primary care streptococcal management) BMJ 2013; 347 :f5806

Paediatrics is Not a Specialty - top tips for working with young people

Paediatrics is difficult to define as a specialty.  At one point the RCPCH talked about “doctors who look at specific health issues, diseases and disorders related to stages of growth and development.”  Now the RCPCH careers site has a very different note stating, "Whether a paediatrician, GP, children's nurse or pharmacist, our job is to help babies, children and young people thrive." I'm guessing that the RCPCH realised that it wasn't just doctors and it certainly wasn't just paediatricians who fitted the original description.

In fact paediatrics may not be a specialty at all.  It could be defined as the art of treating children differently from adults by knowing what diseases affect them, how they respond to illness and how to use that knowledge to help them during their illness or prevent them from becoming ill.

Anyone who works with children in a healthcare setting should study of the art of paediatrics.  We all need to develop our skills in assessing and treating ill children as well as becoming experts in all the other aspects of child health including safeguarding, growth and development.  Children and young people are different in so many ways and it takes a bit of effort to get good at working with them but it is completely worth it.

What is different about children and young people that requires a different approach and different skills?

Children respond differently to illness - Physiological changes can be dramatic in uncomplicated viral illness making the recognition of complicated infection difficult
Children may not localise, report or recognise symptoms - This is why constipation and UTI are often only diagnosed when they have been prolonged.
Children often present with something normal - This often happens because an adult is concerned and doesn't know that the symptom is normal.  One example is knock knees in children.
The overall likelihood of significant pathology is low - Much of paediatrics is about diagnosing normality or at least that the illness is uncomplicated and does not require medical intervention.  The other side of this coin is that the routine nature of a good outcome can lead to complacency and impairs our awareness of complications and significant pathology.
Children are vulnerable - As well as the safeguarding element of caring for children and young people, we have to consider how difficult it is for them to feel safe in a healthcare setting.  It is confusing and intimidating and it is too easy to forget to keep the child at the centre of the process.
There is a lot of uncertainty that goes with the assessment of children - paediatrics is often compared to veterinary medicine because we end up relying more on what we see.  It is fairly usual to find that we can't get specific symptoms and that our ability to examine is limited by the child's interaction.

Last week, I went onto TwitFace and asked the people who were online what their top tips are for working with children an young people.  What follows is based on some of the great responses I recieved.

Starting with the general advice:

There were also loads of tips for examining children:

I haven't been able to include everything and in some cases there were recurring themes which I have categorised together.  There were quite a few specific things that people have found to be useful in paediatric examination, some of which are listed here:

• The guess what's in the tummy game.  I have a high success rate with guessing sausages.  However you go about it I would highly recommend this approach to abdominal examination.  It's probably quite scary for a child to have a stranger press their tummy, but if it's a game that seems to be a different matter.
• For assessing gait, get the child to walk towards their parent rather than away from them.
• For ENT examination:  Tell the child: "I have a magic fairy/dragon detector (ear thermometer) that goes beep when a fairy is in the room. If it beeps I have to check their ears and throat with my magic torch to make sure it isn’t hiding in there."  I have to try that one.
• For respiratory exam, ask them to blow out the candles on an imaginary birthday cake.

One place even had a departmental rabbit.  I can imagine that would work to settle many an otherwise inconsolable child!

Paediatrics may not be a specialty but it is an art.  How you approach that art is up to you but whichever you go about it the end result should be the same:  The child will get the best care possible and you might be having some fun at the same time.

Edward Snelson
Possibly not a Paediatrician
@sailordoctor

Disclaimer - All the views expressed here are solely those of the author.  Any references to Royal Colleges are entirely fictional and should not be used as a reason to revoke the author's invitation to the annual RCPCH cheese night.

Acknowledgements: Thank you to all the people who shared their tips and tricks via social media or face to face.  More importantly, thank you to all the children who put up with us while we figure out how to do the whole paediatric examination thing.  Your patience and tolerance is appreciated.

The Right Sort of Confidence - (Easter Egg: Acute abdominal pain in children)

I feel pretty confident that my car has the right amount of oil in the engine and air in the tires.  Why?  because that has been the case every time I check these things.  So why bother checking?

Paediatrics is a dangerous speciality because the usual outcome of any child presenting for assessment is that everything is fine.  Fever?  It's probably an uncomplicated viral infection.  Rash?  Virus.  Lump in the neck?  Virus.  You get the idea.

As a result, any one of us can become so used to the benign outcome that we don't expect the dangerous problems or the unusual causes of childhood symptoms.  This is called availability bias.  The last 50 children with this presenting complaint had a virus and got better, so this patient is likely to be the same.

Of course the statement about the likelihood is true, however people don't bring their children to us just for a probability estimate.  We are there to assess whether there is a significant problem that requires intervention.  To get there, we need to know what to look for.

Abdominal pain in children is a good example.  Children often get abdominal pains.  One of the most common presentations is abdominal pain during a febrile illness.  Most likely cause?  Virus.  I suspect that the significant pathology that is most often considered in this situation is appendicitis.  Appendicitis is relatively rare in younger children but paradoxically more difficult to diagnose, so while the chances of a 3 year old having appendicitis is very low, so are the chances that a 3 year old with appendicitis will get this diagnosed easily.

Appendicitis is at least on our minds and so we're probably not going to miss it through failure to look.  There are plenty of causes of abdominal pain that are easily missed for various reasons.  Lower lobe pneumonia, for example, is easily missed because it isn't in the abdomen.  Testicular torsion is easily missed if it isn't looked for.  You'd think that if a child or young person had a problem with their genitalia they might mention that.  They often don't.  If you don't look for torsion, you won't find it.

Here's a brief overview of some of the easily missed causes of abdominal pain in children:

Here is a more extensive list of possible causes of abdominal pain in children. (1)

Going through these, starting at one o'clock:

Mesenteric Adenitis - Yes, children with viral upper respiratory tract infection can get acute abdominal pains and can even have localised abdominal tenderness.  Children with more significant causes of pain can also have URTI, so if there are red flag signs or symptoms you should still take these seriously.
Non-IgE food allergy - This can cause acute abdominal pain but paradoxically is a diagnosis best not made acutely.  History, a food diary and follow-up are the way forward when food allergy becomes a possibility.
Gastroenteritis - When vomiting precedes abdominal pain then this makes gastroenteritis more likely.  Similarly, diarrhoea is a strong indicator of viral enteritis.  However, there is no such thing as always, so careful abdominal examination is key and signs that suggest a surgical cause should still lead to referral.
Gynaecological - The main thing to say about this is that it is a common pitfall to forget to even consider this possibility in children.  How often do you think ectopic pregnancy is considered in the differential of a 13 year old with acute abdominal pain?  It should always be remembered as a possiblity.  Do a pregnancy test.
Constipation - This is possibly the most common cause of afebrile acute abdominal pain in children.  There are two main pitfalls.  The first is to miss the diagnosis because the child or parent doesn't think the child is constipated.  The second is to think that because the presentation is acute, the problem just needs a brief period of treatment.  If they are constipated enough to present with acute pain, the problem is chronic and should be treated as such as per NICE guidelines.
Urinary Tract Infection - Abdominal pain +/- vomiting without diarrhoea is a common way for children to present with UTI.  There is no absolute rule on when and when not to test a urine but it is fair to say that significant diarrhoea usually precludes it for a couple of reasons.  In all other cases of acute abdominal pain, it is usually a good idea even if interpreting the result is not completely straightforward.
Colic - Truly a diagnosis of exclusion, but this can be a good history and examination. What to do with colic is covered here.
Appendicitis - Uncommon but not so rare that you won't see a case every now and then. Picking them out from the crowd can be difficult.  Good simple analgesia and reassessment after an hour is often a helpful discriminator for the grey cases if you can do that.
Testicular torsion - Inguinal and genital examination is part of the examination of a male presenting with abdominal pain.  Do it, even if the last 100 times were normal.
Intussusception - Rare but deadly.  Episodes of pallor and signs of being significantly unwell are reasons to suspect intussusception.  Bloody and mucousy (recurrent jelly-like) stools make it easier to diagnose but may be a late sign.
Diabetic Ketoacidosis - It is very easy to see how first presentations are initially diagnosed as viral illnesses.  If you've got a child who's a bit more lethargic or subdued than your typical gastroenteritis case, or if there is a report of polyuria, test a glucose.

In most cases, significant causes will be excluded by a thorough history and examination.  Often a urine test is a good idea and sometimes a second opinion will be necessary.  Abdominal X-ray is almost never useful in making a decision about referral.

Paradoxically,  the wrong sort of confidence comes from repeated experience of nothing bad happening.  The right sort of confidence comes from knowing that bad things will happen and knowing that we're ready for that eventuality.  This often happens once you've experienced the sharp end of an unexpected diagnosis.  If that has happened, congratulations!  You're now an expert.

Edward Snelson
Experienced if not Expert
@sailordoctor

Disclaimer - Experience doesn't always lead to expertise but it's a fairly important element. Bad experience is a good wad to develop great expertise but only if you have all the right elements in place to ensure that you learn without becoming a second victim.  I would like to see more work in that area, especially at the Primary/ Secondary Care interface.

Reference

1. The Essential Clinical Handbook of Common Paediatric Cases, Edward Snelson

Quick and Easy FOAMed - Fallacies and Facts About Foreskin Problems in Children

In case you hadn't noticed, there is now a guideline for everything.  It is impossible to keep up. FOAMed can be really useful in that respect because it should keep a finger on the pulse for you and give you a condensed version of the important things, allowing you to be selective about when you go into something in more detail.  The way it works is that I read the guideline, just in case you don't get the chance.  (insert cheeky winking emoji here)

Nor can you rely on guidelines, alerts and journals to cover everything, despite the sheer quantity of them.  The nature of FOAMed is that it often covers the things that haven't earned a guideline, are not deemed worthy of an alert and have too little academic value to have a published article.  Some things that are over-represented in practice are under-represented in paper.  By way of example, I give you foreskins in children.  I think that the lack of publications on the subject is surprising considering the number of children attending primary and secondary care with this problem, and considering how much is often misunderstood about foreskins in pre-pubertal children.

At some point in my medical training I remember being taught that uncircumcised penises should easily retract by about 3-4 years old and that they should be kept clean.  Balanitis was seen as evidence of poor hygiene and so we were told that more cleaning was the solution.  Foreskins that were ‘non-retractile’ were considered abnormal and if there was recurrent balanitis or ballooning, the child should be considered for circumcision.  We now believe that all of this is untrue.  It is quite normal for the foreskin to remain adhered to the glans until they hit puberty, whenever that may be.  Ballooning is within normal limits and balanitis is often due to unnecessary attempts to retract or clean under a foreskin.  Recurrent balanitis is usually an indication to leave the foreskin alone, rather than to cut it off.

So I know that I was taught something that later turned out to be untrue and I know that many clinicians in both primary and secondary care haven’t heard the good news.  Why?  Presumably because it isn't seen to be worth a guideline, alert or journal article.  There is stuff out there, but not a lot.  This was the best article that I found. (1)

But the lack of literature is not a problem in the brave new world of FOAMed.  FOAMed comes in many different shapes and sizes.  Often it takes the form of a written piece, but some have embraced the infographics approach.  Most notably there is the excellent library of infographics that has come out of the Derby Emergency Department. (2)  I was inspired by Ian Lewins making infographics sound like a good thing so I'm having a go with it.  Here's the result:

An infographic is, by nature, pithy and lacks detail but hopefully it gets the job done.  I've gone for substance over style. I know that if I had given the job to a medical student, they probably would have been much better with the visual effects.  They would also have made sure there were more pictures.  Somehow, this didn't seem like the best subject with which to take that step.

Edward Snelson
President of the Sir Lancelot Spratt Association
@sailordoctor

Disclaimer:  Anyone can do this stuff.  If you want to have a go at making infographics and want to find out more about rickrolling, click this link.

References

1. Drake T, Foreskin problems in boys, Trends in Urology and Men's Health, March/April 2014
2. http://www.peminfographics.com