Critical Care

Our Team

The Division of Critical Care Medicine at Nationwide Children's Hospital is comprised of pediatric intensivists who are board certified or eligible in pediatric critical care medicine that provide 24-hour on-site, attending-level inpatient care.

Research

The Division of Critical Care Medicine is a leading presence in the field of pediatric critical care research.  Our division is home to five NIH-funded researchers (Dr. Mark Hall, Dr. Christopher Montgomery, Dr. Nicole O’Brien, Dr. Andrew Yates, and Dr. Jennifer Muszynski). 

• Nationwide Children’s Hospital is one of only eight sites in the country to participate in the current cycle of the nation’s only NIH-funded research network for critical ill children, the Collaborative Pediatric Critical Care Research Network (CPCCRN).
• In addition, our faculty members are active participants in the Pediatric Acute Lung Injury and Sepsis Investigators Network (PALISI), the country’s largest pediatric critical care research network.

The diverse research interests of our faculty include immunology of critical illness, pediatric neurocritical care, transfusion science, Staphylococcus aureus microbiology, cardiac critical care, anesthesiology, medical education, comparative effectiveness research, and many others.

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News

Nicole O'Brien, MD, Awarded Fulbright Scholarship

Nicole O'Brien, MD, physician in the Division of Critical Care Medicine and director of the Global Health Certificate Program at Nationwide Children's, is the recipient of a prestigious Fulbright Scholarship. The Fulbright Scholarship will allow Dr. O'Brien to further her clinical research and international health endeavors by studying the epidemiology, treatment and outcomes of pediatric traumatic brain injury in the Democratic Republic of Congo in Africa.

Intervention increased appropriate antibiotic use in pediatric ICU

This study, conducted by Todd Karsies, MD, is the first to use patient-specific risk factors to design and implement an empiric protocol to appropriately select and time antibiotics administered to all critically ill children in the pediatric intensive care unit (PICU). The study demonstrated significantly improved appropriateness of empiric antibiotics and decreased time to appropriate antibiotics while still limiting the use of extremely broad antibiotics to only those at highest risk for infection with antibiotic-resistant pathogens. Read the full article.

Suppression of the Adaptive Immune Response Occurs Within 48 Hours of Sepsis for Critically Ill Children

Jennifer Muszynski, MD, principal investigator in the Center for Clinical and Translational Research, led a study on how adaptive immune suppression may be part of an early response to septic shock in critically ill pediatric patients.

Multidisciplinary Initiative Reduces Airway Infection in PICU Patients

An initiative that combines a multidisciplinary health care approach with a range of preventive measures could cut the rate of a common airway infection among children in intensive care by more than half, a new study suggests. The research, led by a team at Nationwide Children’s, appears in the June issue of the journal Pediatric Critical Care Medicine. Ventilator-associated tracheobronchitis —VAT for short — is a lower respiratory infection caused by a buildup of bacteria in the airway. Ordinarily, these small organisms are easily cleared, but being on a ventilator with an artificial airway in place disrupts the body’s natural defenses. This, along with other factors, increases the risk of VAT, says Jennifer Muszysnki, MD, lead study author and a critical care physician and principal investigator in the Center for Clinical and Translational Research in The Research Institute at Nationwide Children’s. Read the news release.

Transfusions Dampen Kids' Immune Function

Among pediatric patients who are critically injured, receiving a blood transfusion is associated with suppression of the immune system, an effect that might be exacerbated when the blood used is older, researchers found.

Patients in the pediatric intensive care unit who received a transfusion had significantly lower production of the pro-inflammatory cytokine TNF-alpha on post-trauma days 1 to 2 compared with those who were not transfused (461 versus 1,024 pg/mL, P=0.002), according to Ryan Nofziger, MD, of Nationwide Children's Hospital in Columbus, Ohio. Read the full article.