Published online August 1, 2007
PEDIATRICS Vol. 120 No. 2 August 2007, pp. 448 (doi:10.1542/peds.2007-1159)
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LETTER TO THE EDITOR

Do All Infants With Apparent Life-Threatening Events Need to Be Admitted?

Shmuel Goldberg, MD
Department of Pediatric Pulmonology

Shepard Schwartz, MD
Department of Pediatrics

Elie Picard, MD
Department of Pediatric Pulmonology
Shaare Zedek Medical Center
Jerusalem 91031, Israel
Faculty of Health Sciences
Ben-Gurion University of the Negev
Beersheva 84105, Israel

To the Editor.—

In the April 2007 issue of Pediatrics, Claudius and Keens1 reported that of 51 infants >30 days of age who experienced a single apparent life-threatening event, none had subsequent events, required significant interventions, or had final diagnoses that, in retrospect, warranted their admission. They wrote in their abstract that these infants "may be discharged safely from the hospital."

The authors must be well aware of the fact that a study based on 50 infants is not powered to detect significant effects with a frequency of <2%. Hence, in the discussion section they stipulated their recommendation to discharge low-risk infants "if the results of this pilot study are borne out in a larger, multicenter population." However, this condition is not mentioned in the abstract. This omission could lead to the immediate adoption of a practice guideline for which sufficient evidence is still lacking.

FOOTNOTES

Statements appearing here are those of the writers and do not represent the official position of the American Academy of Pediatrics or its Committees. Comments on any topic, including the contents of PEDIATRICS, are invited from all members of the profession; those accepted for publication will not be subject to major editorial revision but generally must be no more than 400 words in length. The editors reserve the right to publish replies and may solicit responses from authors and others.

Please see www.pediatrics.org for instructions on submitting letters.

REFERENCE

  1. Claudius I, Keens T. Do all infants with apparent life-threatening events need to be admitted [published correction appears in Pediatrics. 2007;119:1270]? Pediatrics. 2007;119 :679 –683[Abstract/Free Full Text]
PEDIATRICS (ISSN 1098-4275). ©2007 by the American Academy of Pediatrics

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This Article
Right arrow Extract Freely available
Right arrow Full Text (PDF)
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Citing Articles
Right arrow Citing Articles via CrossRef
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Google Scholar
Right arrow Articles by Goldberg, S.
Right arrow Articles by Picard, E.
Right arrow Search for Related Content
PubMed
Right arrow PubMed Citation
Right arrow Articles by Goldberg, S.
Right arrow Articles by Picard, E.
Related Collections
Right arrow Emergency Medicine
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