Browsing Tag

NICU

Nephrology

Children’s of Alabama Becomes First to Safely Provide Dialysis to Tiny Babies

Didactic and hands-on teaching on the use of CRRT using the Aquadex Pureflow.

Despite the frequent use of dialysis for critically ill children and adults, the procedure has historically been used sparingly in neonatal intensive care units (NICU) because dialysis  machines designed for adults can cause severe complications in babies. That’s no longer the case at Children’s of Alabama.

The problem is that continuous renal replacement therapy in these tiny patients requires at least 100 ml of blood to initiate the therapy. This can be half or even more of the baby’s entire blood volume, said David Askenazi, M.D., MSPH, who directs the Pediatric and Infant Center for Acute Care Nephrology. “Many times, when we started the machine, we had to open the crash cart to resuscitate infants who were coding,” he said.

That changed in 2013, when Askenazi realized that a machine designed to remove fluid and sodium from blood in adults with heart failure — the Aquadex FlexFlow® System — could be repurposed for neonate dialysis.

“If we could adapt a machine that requires one-third of the blood of the traditional machine volume to do what we needed, we knew we could improve our ability to support these babies,” he said. So the team learned as much as they could about the device, developed a safety net of processes to maximize the likelihood of success and convinced the hospital to buy its first machine.

Today, the hospital has fiveAquadex machines and two or three babies are typically receiving dialysis at any one time. “Now we have complete control over their fluids, electrolytes and waste products,” Askenazi said, “while the nurses feel comfortable doing the therapy and the babies don’t even know they’re on it.” Last year, babies in the NICU spent a total of 800 days on dialysis compared to just 30 days in 2013.

“For our babies born with diseased or absent kidneys, Aquadex has given them a chance at life,” said NICU nurse practitioner Kara Short, MSN, CRNP, “because in the past, there were no options to treat these patients.”

The team published the results of its first 12 patients in the journal Pediatric Nephrology in 2016. Since then, they have treated more than 90 patients, the smallest just 1.2 kg (2 pounds, 7 ounces) and taught nephrologists at several other children’s hospitals around the country to use the Aquadex. However, there are still only a handful of hospitals offering the procedure.

“We have shown we can now support these babies safely,” Askenazi said. “The impetus now is on us to make sure the patients who can benefit from this therapy make it to Children’s so we can give them a chance for life.”

And the machine’s manufacturer? It is now pursuing a pediatric indication for Aquadex.

A Team Effort

Learn more about the neonatology program and team at Children’s of Alabama.

August 20, 2019 by
Neonatology

NeuroNICU B.R.A.I.N. Program Aims to Improve Outcomes in High-Risk Neonates

Neonatology_Care Protocols

Preterm infants born at 30 weeks or earlier are at higher risk for developing intraventricular hemorrhage (IVH), which is associated with long-term neurocognitive deficits. The risk is also higher for infants with hypoxic-ischemic encephalopathy (HIE), those undergoing ECMO therapy, or those with seizures, metabolic disorders or stroke. Now, a new initiative in the University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB) Division of Neonatology called NeuroNICU B.R.A.I.N. (Brain Rescue and Avoidance of Injury in Neonates) aims to prevent or reduce that risk.

The core of the initiative is a multidisciplinary team of professionals who work to provide neurodevelopmental care for infants at risk for developing brain injury and cognitive deficits. The team includes a pediatric neurologist, pediatric rehabilitation medicine specialist, pediatric neuro-radiologist, neonatal nurse practitioners, nurse manager, physical therapist, occupational therapist, speech therapist, respiratory therapist and nurse champions. The program also makes parents an integral part of the team.

“We all come together every week and discuss every baby on the unit,” said Allison Black, M.D., NICU associate medical director at Children’s of Alabama. “Before the NeuroNICU program, we would consult individually on an as-needed basis.”

Even though an infant may not need every aspect of care, she said, “everyone working together to integrate the different expertise we have in our field will result in better care for the babies.” The program also uses a standardized bundle of care designed to stabilize the infant and carefully monitor for clinical signs that can increase the risk of IVH.

“The process for the brain injury prevention program starts at birth and continues throughout the entire hospital stay,” said Maran Ramani, M.D., who directs the NeuroNICU program. The protocols call for preventing hypothermia, hypoglycemia and extreme variations in the blood pressure and carbon dioxide levels, and for maintaining fluid intake, all with minimal stimulation. Once discharged, all infants are followed long-term and continually assessed for developmental milestones, he said.

In addition to multidisciplinary care, the program provides near infrared spectroscopy monitoring for preterm and term infants to assess the oxygen saturations in the brain. It also uses transcutaneous CO2 monitoring for preterm infants to assess variations in serum CO2 levels, which plays a critical role in the development of IVH. Term and preterm infants also receive a head ultrasound in to screen for IVH, while preterm infants with grade III and IV IVH undergo   conventional electroencephalogram to detect subclinical seizures. Finally, infants with HIE have an MRI with spectroscopy to assess any damage.

Despite the multifactorial etiology of IVH, Ramani said, standardizing the neuroprotective care is reducing the overall rate of IVH in preterm infants (Figure 1).

Figure 1           Rate of IVH Before and After NeuroNICU B.R.A.I.N. Program

Neonatology Care Protocols Chart

Arrow indicates NeuroNICU roll out

Managing Neurologic Disorders
Visit www.uab.edu/medicine/peds/patient-care/neuro-related-programs-centers to learn about the Division of Pediatric Neurology’s subspecialty clinics at the University of Alabama at Birmingham.

 

January 10, 2019 by
Nephrology

Baby NINJA Fights Back Against AKI

Nephrology_Baby_NINJA

The Pediatric and Infancy Center for Acute Nephrology (PICAN) at Children’s of Alabama, in partnership with the University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB) Department of Pediatrics, has served children in Alabama and across the world since its 2013 inception. PICAN’s three-pronged model provides the best available comprehensive multidisciplinary clinical care, education, and research for children with acute kidney injury (AKI) and neonates with kidney disease.

“We believe that if we provide the best care, make important discoveries and educate our staff and those beyond our institution, we can make a huge impact in this field,” said David Askenazi, M.D., MSPH, PICAN director and UAB professor of pediatrics.

As a part of its efforts, PICAN implemented Nephrotoxic Injury Negated by Just-in-Time Action (NINJA), a collaboration between Children’s and Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center. Via NINJA, hospitalized patients receiving medications that can cause kidney injury are automatically identified by using the electronic medical record system and scheduled for dose adjustments and increased renal function surveillance. The rate of acute renal injury in inpatients has been decreased by more than 60 percent, resulting in substantially decreased morbidity across the hospital and reduced hospitalization duration. The NINJA program is so successful that this year it became the first new program added to the Solutions For Patient Safety consortium and instituted at 147 children’s hospitals worldwide.

A recent application of NINJA in Children’s Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU) referred to as Baby NINJA, a project exclusive to Children’s, has nearly eliminated medication associated acute kidney injury in the most vulnerable premature infants. In March 2018, Baby NINJA won the Best Abstract Award at the 23rd International Conference on Advances in Critical Care Nephrology in San Diego, California.

“What’s exciting about Baby NINJA is the simplicity of the approach,” said Christine Stoops, D.O., MPH, Baby NINJA co-investigator and UAB assistant professor in the Division of Neonatology. “It’s looking at all infants exposed to nephrotoxic medications for potential kidney injury with a daily lab level (serum creatinine), and paying careful attention to whether a baby still needs these medications or can benefit from a lower daily dose.”

“With that easy shift in our mindset, we have shown greater than an 80 percent reduction in kidney injury in high-risk patients,” Stoops said. “This has the potential to reduce chronic kidney disease in these already at-risk infants.”

In addition, PICAN has one of the most successful Continuous Renal Replacement Therapy (CRRT) programs to support critically ill patients who have lost kidney function. For example, PICAN in 2014 studied a new dialysis device called Aquadex FlexFlow ™ and adapted the device to treat neonates and premature infants with kidney failure who are too small for hemodialysis. As a result, children as small 1 kilogram can now receive this lifesaving therapy. Children’s is the first pediatric hospital in the country to successfully adapt Aquadex for use on infants, and the device is now being used at other major children’s hospitals, including Cincinnati Children’s, Boston Children’s Hospital and Seattle Children’s Hospital.

“We do more dialysis in newborns than other hospitals in the world,” Askenazi said. “We have cared for 70 babies with CRRT and have great success in initiating the machine without cardiovascular compromise, which was a problem before using Aquadex. Our survival rate in babies has increased from 30 percent to 55 percent over the last few years.”

PICAN is also the driving force behind the international Neonatal Kidney Collaborative (NKC). Under the direction of Askenazi, this network of neonatologists, pediatric nephrologists, epidemiologists and statisticians from the U.S., as well as India, Canada, and Australia, are committed better understanding AKI in neonates.

The inaugural project of NKC is the Assessment of Worldwide Acute Kidney Injury Epidemiology in Neonates (AWAKEN) study. The 24-center study captured data from over 2,000 neonates admitted to the NICU who were on intravenous fluids for at least 48 hours.

“We have learned a tremendous amount from the AWAKEN database. We can now show that AKI is very common in select groups of patients. Those patients with AKI were four times more likely to die, even after controlling other factors that are associated with neonatal death,” Askenazi said.

“We have recently reported that caffeine can be a protective agent against AKI, and we have 12 other manuscripts in preparation as well. Our plans are to submit a [National Institutes of Health] grant to continue our research and answer more questions on this topic in the future.”


Nephrology Fellowship Program
Learn more about the Pediatric Nephrology Fellowship Program at UAB at https://www.childrensal.org/FellowshipProgram.

December 28, 2018 by
Neonatology

Joined at the Hip

Neonatology_Hip

The sky bridges connecting the University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB) Women & Infants Center and Children’s of Alabama provide more than a means of travel from point A to B. For the UAB/Children’s Division of Neonatology, the sky bridges not only facilitate seamless clinical care, but also seamless research collaborations.

“It’s a tremendous benefit,” said Trent Tipple, M.D., UAB associate professor of pediatrics, director of neonatology faculty development and co-director of the Neonatal-Perinatal Medicine Fellowship Training Program. “The integration is one that just makes sense. It eliminates a lot of barriers that can make research frustrating and allows one to focus on designing the best study with the necessary personnel; to really think about how to execute a study rather than whether a study can be done.”

“It’s one of the unique features here. UAB’s Regional Neonatal Intensive Care Unit and Children’s NICU are literally joined at the hip,” said Namasivayam Ambalavanan, M.D., UAB professor of pediatrics, neonatology division co-director, director of the Translational Research in Normal & Disordered Development (TReNDD) Program at UAB and principal investigator of the UAB Research Center. “This makes clinical care a lot better and research also improves.”

Carl “Tim” Coghill, M.D., UAB professor of pediatrics and medical director of Children’s NICU, said the physical proximity not only serves as a benefit to clinicians and researchers, but also patient families facing what can be a stressful experience.

“Many freestanding children’s hospitals are blocks away from their associated delivery units, making it difficult for consultants to see the infants without transfer away from the mother,” Coghill said. “Children’s of Alabama used to be two blocks from UAB with no connecting bridge. With the present bridge, the closest NICU bed at UAB is only 75 feet from the nearest NICU bed at Children’s, which is closer than some beds are to each other in other respective units.”

Coghill continued, “The ability to stay with a nursing staff that you know and a hospital that you are familiar with while continuing to get the best care is a confidence builder, and delivering great care is only good enough if it is perceived to be great care by the patients and families as well.”

As a founding member of the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD) Neonatal Research Network (NRN), part of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), UAB/Children’s is consistently one of the top centers in developing, leading, enrolling and analyzing randomized controlled trials and clinical studies. For example, neonatology division members have led three major innovative NRN studies – the SAVE Factorial Trial, the Cytokine Study and the SUPPORT Factorial Trial. A fourth trial led by UAB/Children’s neonatologists testing the effects of caffeine late in the neonatal course and at home to shorten hospitalization and decrease apparent life threatening events began enrollment this year.

In its more than 30 years of existence, the NRN has defined the standards of multi-institutional collaborative research resulting in increased survival and decreased morbidity rates of extremely low birth weight infants and other critically ill infants in the U.S. Wally Carlo, M.D., Edwin M. Dixon Endowed Chair in Neonatology and neonatology division co-director, and Ambalavanan are principal investigators for the NRN and have led nationwide studies on ventilator care, antenatal steroids, chronic lung disease and neurodevelopment outcomes. A study in the NRN published in the New England Journal of Medicine reported that neonatal mortality has been decreased over the last 10 years, including decreases in almost all specific causes of neonatal mortality, because of improvements in care implemented in the NRN centers.

In addition, UAB/Children’s is the only facility in the U.S. to be awarded grants in all three perinatal networks from the NICHD – the NRN, the Maternal-Fetal Medicine Units Network and the Global Network for Women’s and Children’s Health Research. For more than two decades, these networks have awarded UAB/Children’s more than $20 million to fund research for pregnant women and babies. The most recent grants, awarded in 2016, will bring a total $1.1 million per year through 2021.

Under the Global Network, UAB/Children’s researchers have led seminal investigations of resuscitation and essential newborn care in 100 communities in six countries, which included almost 200,000 infants. These trials established the effectiveness of these interventions in reducing stillbirths and neonatal mortality, and led to worldwide implementation of training, including the globally-implemented Helping Babies Breathe Program and the Essential Care for Every Baby Program launched in 2014. The programs have been introduced in more than 75 countries to save babies’ lives at birth, with the potential to reduce infant deaths soon after birth by 1 million.

“It should save a million lives every single year at almost no cost,” Carlo said of the programs. “It will save the most lives in the world.”

Division of Neonatology
Learn more about the Division of Neonatology, including specialty clinics and faculty bios, at https://www.childrensal.org/neonatology.

December 28, 2018 by
Neonatology

STEPP-IN Initiative Improves Outcomes in Neonatal Surgical Patients

Neonatology_STEPP-IN

Newborns admitted to neonatal intensive care units (NICU) in freestanding children’s hospitals like Children’s of Alabama are typically sicker with much greater complications than those admitted to NICUs in delivery hospitals. Indeed, “All our patients are referred because of some type of complication that can’t be cared for at a delivery facility,” said NICU Associate Medical Director Allison Black, M.D. Most, she said, will require surgical procedures and/or care from pediatric subspecialists.

Thus, developing policies and procedures to improve the overall care and outcomes for these patients is paramount. One of the best ways to do that, research shows, is through a quality improvement approach, in which collaborative teams review current procedures, identify gaps, then redesign processes to close the gaps.

Which is exactly what Black and her team did to reduce perioperative stress in their tiny patients. Called the Safe Transitions and Euthermia in the Perioperative Period in Infants and Neonates (STEPP-IN), it is part of the Children’s Hospital Neonatal Consortium (CHNC).

“We know that going to the operating room creates significant physiological stress for these babies,” according to Black, in part because of the handoff between teams. The idea was to promote stability by improving and standardizing the handoff process. “There was a handoff through the charting, but not face-to-face,” she said.

So a multidisciplinary team of clinicians from the NICU, anesthesia and surgery worked together to create protocols and handoff forms to improve scores on the Post-Operative Management Score (POMS), which measures temperature, glucose, pH, pCO2 and intubation status, all of which can indicate infant stress. The score is calculated based on the number of times every parameter is within the target range. The goal is to reach each parameter at least 85 percent of the time.

The revamped protocol used today requires that the primary bedside nurse as well as nurse practitioner and/or neonatologist transport the infant to the pre-operative bay and provide an in-person handoff to the anesthesiologist or certified nurse anesthetist (CRNA), including written documentation of the baby’s status.

That face-to-face communication is important, Black said. “There are some things about the patient’s overall acuity and clinical course that can’t be expressed on paper and is better communicated verbally at the bedside with the patient,” she said. A similar process occurs postoperatively.

The team first tackled temperature. The handoff sheet requires temperature measures at six time points, including before and after transport to and from the operating room, as well as the highest and lowest temperature measurements during the procedure and the OR room temperature. “From this data we were able to pinpoint when our patients were getting cold and could work to address problems, such as providing education about thermoregulation in the OR as well as during transport,” Black said. Since implementing the new procedures, 90 percent or more of surgical patients have had postoperative temperatures within the accepted range.

Soon after Children’s began collecting data on the initiative, it received the CHNC Continuous Quality Improvement Initiative Golden Collaborative Award. In October, it also received a CHNC award for its work on improving euthermia in the postoperative process through the handoff procedure.

The team is now working to improve other POMS parameters. For instance, it found that it was only collecting full POMS data on about 10 to 20 percent of its postsurgical patients. So it developed a protocol and educated NICU and bedside nurses to obtain postoperative glucose as well as blood gases within one hour of the patient’s return to the NICU from the OR.

“Now that we’re collecting the data, we can take a hard look at where we could improve,” Black said. The team now evaluates the data every month and works to identify and address any problems.

“Looking at the parameters and understanding how they reflect the stability of the patient and how we can improve them in the postoperative period is improving the overall care,” she said.

Neonatology Clinics
Learn about some specialized neonatology services at Children’s of Alabama.

December 28, 2018 by