Pediatric Critical Care Medicine www.pccmjournal.org 399 The authors reply: We appreciate the interest of Ponnarmeni et al (1) in our study related to the early use of albumin in burned… Click to show full abstract
Pediatric Critical Care Medicine www.pccmjournal.org 399 The authors reply: We appreciate the interest of Ponnarmeni et al (1) in our study related to the early use of albumin in burned children. We found relevant results in this research and obtained substantial results regarding the impact on the treatment of thermal injuries in children (2). First of all, we would like to clarify a mistake in Table 3 (1). The intervention group (n = 23) received, actually, 2.04 (1.31–2.44) mL/kg/% total body surface area (p < 0.0025). We apologize for this error. The eligible patients for this study had intermediate burn characteristics and received early and adequate support in the initial phase of the fluid resuscitation. This means that there was no delay involving ringer lactate infusion. Only a few participants showed hemodynamic instability during hospitalization, with similar distribution in the two groups and therefore this did not impact the study results. The 12-hour time interval between burn injury and Burn Center admission is considered safe and able to minimize the impact of prehospital management of burn injuries, that is, to minimize a possible interference of excessive or insufficient prehospital fluid infusion with the patient’s clinical outcome (3, 4). The volume of crystalloid solution received in the prehospital phase was accounted for together with the total amount of volume administered in the first day of resuscitation. The serum albumin levels of all patients were measured at admission and during the hospitalization. There were no significant differences between the groups. Besides that, patients who presented in renal failure due to initial hypovolemia had their renal function reestablished after the fluid resuscitation, and none of the patients required renal replacement therapy. A study investigating infectious episodes in this group of patients is in progress, and the final results will be available soon. Evaluation of the “Early” Use of Albumin in Children With Extensive Burns: Were the Differences Significant?
               
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