You are here

Article Text

Article menu
Download PDFPDF
PostScript
Letter
Humidified high-flow nasal cannula oxygen for bronchiolitis: should we go with the flow?
  1. Ariel O Mace1,
  2. James Gibbons1,
  3. André Schultz2,3,4,
  4. Geoff Knight5,
  5. Andrew C Martin1,4
  1. 1 Department of General Paediatrics, Princess Margaret Hospital for Children, Perth, Australia
  2. 2 Department of Respiratory Medicine, Princess Margaret Hospital for Children, Perth, Australia
  3. 3 Telethon Kids Institute, University of Western Australia, Perth, Australia
  4. 4 School of Paediatrics and Child Health, University of Western Australia, Perth, Australia
  5. 5 Paediatric Intensive Care Unit, Princess Margaret Hospital for Children, Perth, Australia
  1. Correspondence to Dr Ariel O Mace, Department of General Paediatrics, Princess Margaret Hospital for Children, Perth, Australia; ariel.mace{at}health.wa.gov.au

https://doi.org/10.1136/archdischild-2017-313950

Statistics from Altmetric.com

    Request Permissions

    If you wish to reuse any or all of this article please use the link below which will take you to the Copyright Clearance Center’s RightsLink service. You will be able to get a quick price and instant permission to reuse the content in many different ways.

    Despite living in an era of evidence-based medicine and austerity, where every health dollar must be justified, the use of humidified high-flow nasal cannula oxygen (HFNC) in children with bronchiolitis has become increasingly prevalent,1 with limited evidence to substantiate its clinical benefit or economic worth. Current National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE 2015) guidelines for bronchiolitis state that ‘the use of this medical device is becoming widespread without demonstration of additional efficacy’. Recent studies by Kepreotes et al 2 and Riese et al 3 have shown that the use of ward-based HFNC in children with bronchiolitis did not reduce the hospital length of stay (LOS) or rate of admission to the paediatric intensive care unit (PICU), when compared with standard low-flow oxygen therapy. …

    View Full Text

    Footnotes

    • Contributors AOM conceived and developed the project, drafted the correspondence, edited the draft and approved the final correspondence. JG developed the project, contributed to and compiled data, reviewed and edited the draft and approved the final correspondence. AS and GK reviewed and edited the draft and approved the final correspondence. ACM developed the project, reviewed and edited the draft and approved the final correspondence.

    • Competing interests None declared.

    • Ethics approval Princess Margaret Hospital for Children Governance, Evidence, Knowledge, Outcomes (GEKO, Quality Activity #10219).

    • Provenance and peer review Not commissioned; internally peer reviewed.