Pediatric Critical Illness Hyperglycemia and Glycemic Control Registry

Many studies over the past decade have demonstrated that clinical outcomes can be improved in critically ill adults by aggressive management of hyperglycemic with insulin infusions (Van Den Berghe 2001, Van Den Berghe 2006, Krinsey 2004, Treggari 2008, Scalea, 2007, Lang 2007). Yet, in some of these studies and other recent trials (i.e. Glucontrol (Preiser, 2009) VISEP (Brunkhorst, 2008) and (NICE-SUGAR, 2009)), have highlighted the potential and real risks of glycemic control (namely iatrogenic hypoglycemia) and questioned how effectively glucose can be controlled in critical illness. One reason for the suboptimal glycemic control witnessed in some trials may be not rigorously refined and validated. Even as such, many medical oversight committees (including the Institutes of Healthcare Improvement, the American Diabetes Association, and Society of Critical Care Medicine, among others) continue to recommend regular and aggressive glycemic control in critically ill patients. Although not specifically included nor excluded from such recommendations, most pediatric intensivists have not incorporated glycemic control into regular practice primarily due to concerns of therapy induced hyperglycemia - although there are reports of protocols that appear to be effective at controlling BG levels with low rates of hypoglycemia (Preissig et al 2008, Verhoeven et al 2009).

Our group at Emory University and Children's' Healthcare of Atlanta has taken a progressive, yet methodical, approach to better understand the implications of hyperglycemia and its treatment in critically ill and injured children. Practitioners at our facility developed a pediatric-specific protocol to identify and treat hyperglycemia in critically ill children. We have instituted this approach as standard care in our facility and have experience with managing several hundred children with hyperglycemia. Our approach to glycemic management has very promising safety and efficacy profiles, even when compared to the most stringent and successful glycemic control protocols used in adults. We published the first experience in pediatric glycemic control in pediatric in 2008 (Preissig et al PCCM 2008) and have used our experience to identify specific risk factors for developing hypoglycemia (Preissig et al JPed, 2009).

The goal of this proposal is to assist our step-wise approach in investigating hyperglycemia in critically ill children by externally validating our glycemic control protocol via multi-center evaluation. In doing so, we will also be developing the infrastructure and a tested intervention that can be leveraged for future studies of hyperglycemia in pediatric critical illness, including a multi-center outcome trial. The specific hypothesis for this project is that our protocol is safe and efficient at identifying and managing hyperglycemia in critically ill or injured children in pediatric ICUs regardless of ICU size, acuity, model, staffing makeup, or clinical focus.