DNase and atelectasis in non-cystic fibrosis pediatric patients.docVIP

Available online /content/9/4/R351 Research Open Access Vol 9 No 4 DNase and atelectasis in non-cystic fibrosis pediatric patients Tom Hendriks1, Matthijs de Hoog2, Maarten H Lequin3, Annick S Devos3 and Peter JFM Merkus4 1Pediatrician, Catharina Hospital, Eindhoven, The Netherlands 2Pediatric Intensivist, Division of Intensive Care, Department of Pediatrics, Erasmus University and Erasmus Medical Centre/Sophia Childrens Hospital, Rotterdam, The Netherlands 3Pediatric Radiologist, Division of Radiology, Department of Pediatrics, Erasmus University and Erasmus Medical Centre/Sophia Childrens Hospital, Rotterdam, The Netherlands 4Pediatric Pulmonologist, Division of Respiratory Medicine, Department of Pediatrics, Erasmus University and Erasmus Medical Centre/Sophia Childrens Hospital, Rotterdam, The Netherlands Corresponding author: Peter JFM Merkus, p.j.f.m.merkus@erasmusmc.nl Received: 26 Nov 2004 Revisions requested: 18 Jan 2005 Revisions received: 14 Apr 2005 Accepted: 20 Apr 2005 Published: 20 May 2005 Critical Care 2005, 9:R351-R356 (DOI 10.1186/cc3544) This article is online at: /content/9/4/R351 ? 2005 Hendriks et al, licensee BioMed Central Ltd. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (/licenses/by/ 2.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is cited. Abstract Introduction No evidence based treatment is available for atelectasis. We aimed to evaluate the clinical and radiologic changes in pediatric patients who received DNase for persistent atelectasis that could not be attributed to cardiovascular causes, and who were unresponsive to treatment with inhaled bronchodilators and physiotherapy. significantly within 2 hours (P 0.01), except for the heart rate (P = 0.06). Chest X-ray scores improved significantly within 24 hours after DNase treatment (P 0.001). Individual improvement was o