PCCM Audio Summary - January 2026
The January 2026 issue of Pediatric Critical Care Medicine (PCCM) features a validation of machine learning models to predict cardiac surgery-associated acute kidney injury, a comparison of children who did and did not receive subspecialty pediatric palliative care team consultation after experiencing out-of-hospital cardiac arrest, and a comparison of thrombosis risk in venovenous multisite extracorporeal membrane oxygenation between surgical and percutaneous approaches. Clinical investigations discuss outcomes in patients who received high-dose insulin therapy after beta-blocker and calcium channel blocker poisonings, compare management of patients with chylothorax after vascular ring repair with those with chylothorax after other cardiac surgeries, investigate the association of serum vitamin C levels with 28-day mortality and organ dysfunction in pediatric patients with sepsis, compare the use of in-person or video face-to-face modalities to increase language interpreting encounters for patients, and use quality improvement (QI) methodology to assess whether in situ early-mobility simulation sessions increase nurse-led mobilization of critically ill children. One original research article uses QI methodology to implement a nurse-led pediatric intensive care unit (PICU) liberation rounding process using the Society of Critical Care Medicine’s PICU Liberation (A-F) Bundle. Another evaluates the frequency of hospital-acquired venous thromboembolism in patients with tracheostomies and associated surrogate markers of impaired mobility. Lastly, the PCCM narrative describes tranquil moments that sometimes accompany children’s deaths.
