Predicting Rehydration Requirements in Children using Capillary gas measurement

Predicting the Need for Hospital Care in Paediatric Gastroenteritis using Capillary blood measurement

Status

Completed

Phases

Unknown

Study type

Observational

Source

ANZCTR

Registry ID

ACTRN12606000497505

Acronym

PRRICC trial

Enrollment

Registered

2006-12-04

Start date

2006-08-23

Completion date

2007-10-25

Last updated

2020-01-13

For informational purposes only — not medical advice. Sourced from public registries and may not reflect the latest updates. Terms

Conditions

None listed

Brief summary

Predicting how well a child will respond to treatment for gastroenteritis is difficult and means that children often spend many hours in the emergency department. Blood tests can sometimes help predict how unwell a child is, but take some time to be done. We propose to do a fingerprick blood test called a capillary gas which can be tested quickly and done with minor discomfort only and analyze the results to see if we can predict which children need admission. We anticipate that the more unwell children will need admission, and that there will be changes on their blood tests that we can use to predict this. If we can prove that this works, it will reduce the amount of time that they will have to stay in the emergency department.

Interventions

Utility of using capillary gas results to predict admission to hospital from the emergency department in children with gastroenteritis, defined as vomiting and/or diarrhoea due to a presumed infectious cause. Capillary gas measurement is a test using a spring loaded lancet to make a finger or heel prick, similar to that used for blood sugar testing. The few drops of blood are then drawn into a capillary tube and analyzed on a blood gas machine. This is a routine form of testing in most paediatric emergency departments. This test is done at the time of enrolment of the child in the trial, and prior to the decision regarding admission to hospital or discharge from the emergency department. The doctor is not made aware of the capillary gas result so that their decision to admit or discharge is not affected by these results. The capillary gas results will be analyzed once the entire trial period is completed (approximately 100 enrolled patients), comparing the results from those patients who were admitted for treatment of gastroenteritis with those who did not require treatment and looking for significant differences between the groups.

Eligibility

Sex/Gender

All

Age

6 Months to 6 Years

Healthy volunteers

Inclusion criteria

Any child with clinical diagnosis of gastroenteritis.

Exclusion criteria

Consent not obtained from parents, unable to process a capillary gas sample.

Outcome results