PECARN Study Could Ease Diagnosis of Bacterial Infections in Infants

In a National Institutes of Health (NIH) media advisory, the institutes announced a new protocol that "could help emergency room physicians to rule out life-threatening bacterial infections among infants up to 2 months of age who have fevers, potentially eliminating the need for spinal taps, unnecessary antibiotic treatments or expensive hospital stays." Scientists who developed the protocol are part of the Pediatric Emergency Care Applied Research Network (PECARN), and developed the protocol from a study of more than 1,800 infants seen at 26 emergency departments around the country. Among the authors of the study, published in JAMA Pediatrics, is Elizabeth Powell, MD, MPH, attending physician in Emergency Medicine at Lurie Children's, and Professor of Pediatrics - Emergency Medicine at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine.