Paediatric critical care retrieval provides some of the most challenging clinical scenarios for the retrieval physician. Children have a relatively low incidence of critical illness in comparison to adults and they constitute a minority of the population (around 20% or less in high-income countries). Approximately 50% of critically ill children are under 2 years of age, with a more even age-distribution from pre-school through to school-age and teenage years. Consequently, paediatric intensive care and paediatric intensive care retrieval are low volume, highly specialized areas of practice in healthcare systems that cater predominantly for adults. In comparison to neonatal retrieval, the case load in paediatric intensive care transport is small; however, there is a much wider spectrum of pathology. Thus, paediatric intensive care transport differs from both adult and neonatal retrieval. It requires appropriate specialist expertise and skills in the entire age-range and disease spectrum of paediatric intensive care as well as a well-designed paediatric retrieval system.
Paediatric intensive care transport.