Pediatric Emergency Playbook

Do we recognize shock early enough? How do we prioritize our interventions? How can we tell whether we’re making our patient better or worse?   World wide, shock is a leading cause of morbidity and mortality in children, mostly for failure to recognize or to treat adequately. So, what is shock? Simply put, shock is the inadequate delivery of oxygen to your tissues.  That’s it.  Our main focus is on improving our patient’s perfusion. Oxygen delivery to the tissues depends on cardiac output, hemoglobin concentration, the oxygen saturation of the hemoglobin you have, and the environmental partial pressure of oxygen. At the bedside, we can measure some of these things, directly or indirectly.  But did you notice that blood pressure is not part of the equation?  The reason for that is that blood pressure is really an indirect proxy for perfusion – it’s not necessary the ultimate goal. The equation here is a formality: DO2 = (cardiac output) x [(hemoglobin concentration) x SaO2 x 1.39] + (PaO2  x 0.003)     Sho