Based on the 2018 WHO-WFSA International Standards for a Safe Practice of Anaesthesia, UCSF CHESA and the WFSA has developed the Anaesthesia Facility Assessment Tool (AFAT) in order to help regional and national anaesthesia and health care leadership to assess capacity data about anaesthesia workforce, equipment, medicines and practice at the facility level.
KEY POINTS
• The mainstay of therapy for children with critical illness due to SARS-CoV-2 infection is supportive paediatric intensive care unit care with specialist multidisciplinary involvement.
• Critical illness resulting from SARS-CoV-2 infection in children has low reported mortality despite requiring significant levels of therapy at presentation and during intensive care stay.
• In children presenting with primarily respiratory symptoms, adherence to the paediatric acute respiratory distress syndrome guidelines and early prone ventilation appear the most effective strategies.
• Children who present with vasoplegic shock commonly require multiple vasopressors and demonstrate marked cardiovascular instability. There is an emerging trend for use of intravenous immunoglobulin in these patients.
• Cases that fulfil the paediatric inflammatory multisystem syndrome criteria are at risk of acutely developing cardiac and coronary dysfunction.
This article highlights why healthcare workers during COVID-19 are experiencing chronic fatigue, stress, burnout, emotional exhaustion and feeling depersonalized. To protect mental wellbeing there are methods and interventions to help with coping, decrease burnout and reduce the risk of posttraumatic stress.
These self-guided case based tutorials review the key concepts of acid-base disturbances and blood gas analysis.
