Pediatric Patients and Neurocritical Care

Pediatric neurocritical care is an emerging field that deals with critically ill children with neurologic illnesses. Neurocritical illnesses can be primary or secondary to systemic conditions. Pediatric neurocritical care places a heavy burden on hospital resources, often leading to protracted admission, excessive resource utilization, poor neurological outcomes, and high mortality. As pediatric neurocritical conditions are diverse and often involve several organ systems, multidisciplinary management is required to improve clinical outcomes. There is also a lack of high-quality evidence to guide treatment decisions, which adds to the complexity of delivering optimal care. In neurocritical care, there should be a special emphasis on prompt diagnosis and targeted therapy, multimodal neuromonitoring, rapid treatment of complications causing secondary neurologic injury, and organ-system support if required.