Clinical practice guidelines (CPGs) are intended to improve the quality of clinical care by promoting evidence- based care, reducing inappropriate variation, and producing optimal outcomes for patients. CPGs have been developed at RCH since 1996. These CPGs were focussed on practice at RCH until 2011, when many were adapted for use across Victoria.
Join us for this ‘traditional’ Grand Round that will showcase the fascinating and diverse world of infectious diseases. In a series of short case presentations, discover how the Infectious Diseases team battles with viruses, bacteria, fungi, protozoa and alien life forms.
In the emergency setting, sepsis is the primary or differential diagnosis for a substantial proportion of febrile or unwell children. In this Grand Round, we will discuss challenges with early recognition and initial management of sepsis in children. We will discuss RCH efforts to improve the care of children with sepsis, including local, national, and international collaborations.
Both RSV and Dengue have proved to be difficult vaccine targets. In both cases vaccine development has taken a very long time, and in both cases some vaccine candidates have led to more severe disease in some individuals. We are currently in the middle of an era of remarkable progress in both fields, but problems remain.
The Bacille Calmette-Guérin (BCG) vaccine, a 100-year-old vaccine usually given to protect against tuberculosis, also has ‘off-target’ effects on the immune system that protect against other infections and allergic diseases.
We have a National Roadmap, which includes COVID-19 vaccine coverage targets for the easing of restrictions. But how do children and adolescents fit into this, with regard the direct and indirect effects of Delta on their health and well-being?
Tuberculosis is a major cause of child morbidity and mortality globally. Young children are at particular risk of severe and disseminated disease following exposure to a person with tuberculosis. Public health and clinical services, including in Victoria, focus on early detection and treatment of both disease and infection. There have been recent developments that potentially strengthen and decentralise services for tuberculosis.
Never in the field of health was so much learned by so many in so few months. This, the opening Grand Round for 2021 will recap the lessons from last year, take stock of where we are in February 2021, describe the complex situation with vaccines, and look to what the year might hold for the pandemic and children in Australia and countries around the world. Topics will include: Why is COVID-19 less severe in children? What is the role of schools in transmission and what is the impact of new variants? Vaccines: who, when and how? The indirect effects of Covid: poverty and malnutrition, measles, loss of education, and child marriage.
In the early decades of European settlement, Australia was free of some infectious diseases such as measles, scarlet fever and diphtheria which could not survive the long voyage to Australia. When these infections did arrive, as shipping times reduced, resistance was low and severe epidemics occurred, especially among children in the crowded slums of the cities, and among indigenous populations who were previously free of these infections.
It is well established that kids get less sick from COVID-19 than adults. However, what do we know about the extent infected children contribute to spreading the virus?
With some areas of Melbourne approaching their third week of lockdown and widespread community transmission, how do we make decisions about when it’s safe to reopen schools and what can we do to prevent kids from transmitting the virus? At Melbourne’s largest children’s hospital, we will hear what the commonest conditions are that are causing kids to get sick during the COVID-19 pandemic.
