0000000000462345
AUTHOR
Maria Agudo
Exploring Inflammatory Status in Febrile Seizures Associated with Urinary Tract Infections: A Two-Step Cluster Approach
Background: Urinary tract infections (UTIs) are considered common facilitating factors, along with other infections, in triggering febrile seizures (FS). The main purpose of our study was to identify specific inflammatory patterns of UTI cases from other infections in a specific cluster, using a combination of inflammatory biomarkers to differentiate UTIs from other bacterial diseases triggering FS. Method: This prospective study included a number of 136 patients with 197 distinct FS events, from patients hospitalized in the Pediatric Clinical Hospital Sibiu, among which 10.2% were diagnosed with UTIs. Results: In one-third of the patients with UTIs (20 cases), the symptoms were limited to …
A Decision-Tree Approach to Assist in Forecasting the Outcomes of the Neonatal Brain Injury
Neonatal brain injury or neonatal encephalopathy (NE) is a significant morbidity and mortality factor in preterm and full-term newborns. NE has an incidence in the range of 2.5 to 3.5 per 1000 live births carrying a considerable burden for neurological outcomes such as epilepsy, cerebral palsy, cognitive impairments, and hydrocephaly. Many scoring systems based on different risk factor combinations in regression models have been proposed to predict abnormal outcomes. Birthweight, gestational age, Apgar scores, pH, ultrasound and MRI biomarkers, seizures onset, EEG pattern, and seizure duration were the most referred predictors in the literature. Our study proposes a decision-tree approach b…