Primary Children's Hospital

About: Primary Children's Hospital is a healthcare organization based out in Salt Lake City, Utah, United States. It is known for research contribution in the topics: Population & Health care. The organization has 1770 authors who have published 2594 publications receiving 107857 citations. The organization is also known as: Intermountain Primary Children's Medical Center & Intermountain Primary Children's Hospital.

Safety and efficacy of allogeneic PBSC collection in normal pediatric donors: the pediatric blood and marrow transplant consortium experience (PBMTC) 1996-2003.

Abstract: The use of peripheral blood stem cells (PBSC) for allogeneic transplants in adults has greatly increased. This trend is reflected in pediatrics, where healthy children increasingly are donating PBSC or donor lymphocyte infusion (DLI) via apheresis for use by ill siblings. There is a potential concern that the risks of PBSC collection may differ for pediatric donors. However, no large studies have assessed safety issues in this population. To address this need, we reviewed 218 (213 PBSC, five DLI) collections in 201 normal pediatric donors (8 months to 17 years, median 11.8 years) at 22 institutions in the Pediatric Blood and Marrow Transplant Consortium. Donors received a median of 4 days of growth factor, and mean collection yield was 9.1 x 10(6) CD34+ cells/kg recipient weight. Younger age, days of apheresis, and male gender predicted increased yield of CD34+ cells/kg donor weight. Growth factor-induced pain was mild and reported in less than 15% of patients. Most donors <20 kg (23/25, 92%) required PRBC priming of the apheresis machine. This experience with over 200 collections demonstrates that PBSC collection is safe in normal pediatric donors and desired CD34 cell yields are easily achieved. Younger children utilize more medical resources and children <20 kg usually require a single blood product exposure.

Use of the ETV Success Score to explain the variation in reported endoscopic third ventriculostomy success rates among published case series of childhood hydrocephalus.

Abstract: Object Published case series of endoscopic third ventriculostomy (ETV) for childhood hydrocephalus have reported widely varying success rates. The authors recently developed and internally validated the ETV Success Score (ETVSS); this is a simplified means of predicting the 6-month success rate of ETV for a child with hydrocephalus, based on age, etiology of hydrocephalus, and presence of a previous shunt. The authors hypothesized that the ETVSS would be able to predict with reasonable accuracy the actual ETV success rate reported among published case series. Methods A literature search was performed to identify published pediatric ETV papers that contained enough information with which to calculate an aggregate, mean predicted ETVSS for the cohort. This was then compared with the actual ETV success rate in the cohort. Data were extracted independently in triplicate, including by 2 individuals who were not involved with the development of the ETVSS. Results Fifteen papers reporting on 322 patients were in...

Quantification of stretch-induced cytoskeletal remodeling in vascular endothelial cells by image processing.

Abstract: Background Reorientation of the cell axis induced by cyclic stretching is an early response to mechanical forces in vitro. However, quantitative assay for this phenomenon has been difficult due to lack of robust methods. We hypothesized that cell orientation may be redefined by the orientation of actin fibers. We developed image processing methods to quantitate the orientation and density of actin fibers. Methods A convolution filter using Sobel kernels was adapted to determine the orientation and density of actin fibers in human endothelial cells. Unidirectional stretching (10%, 0.5 Hz) was applied to induce cytoskeletal remodeling by varying the duration of stimulation (control, 0.5, 1, 2, 5, 10, and 20 h). Actin fibers were visualized by fluorescent phalloidin. The image processing method was compared with the manual method for reproducibility. Both confluent and subconfluent cells were tested to assess the efficacy of the methods. Results Cyclic stretch-induced dense and uninterrupted actin cabling formed across the cell body and, later, the actin fibers became aligned perpendicular to the stretch direction. The variance of actin fiber orientation became smaller after 2 h of stretch (F < 0.01). The actin fiber density index, a derived parameter related to the density of actin fibers, increased as early as 30 min of stretching (P < 0.05) and decreased after 10 h of stretching. Reproducibility of our method was extremely good. Applicability of the method was not compromised by cell density. Conclusions Our method is reliable for quantifying cytoskeletal remodeling induced by mechanical force. Cytometry Part A 55A:109–118, 2003. © 2003 Wiley-Liss, Inc.