The role of watchful waiting in caring for critically ill children

Offhand you would not think a child with severe viral pneumonia and one with a major head injury are much alike, but they are. Together they illustrate a great truth of pediatric intensive care medicine, which is much of what we do is not specific treatment for the child’s problem; rather, it is what we term “supportive care,” because it supports the continued functioning of the child’s vital organs and systems while the problem runs its course and the child heals.

Both of these children often require very sophisticated technology to provide that organ support, things like mechanical ventilators and devices for measuring pressures inside the brain, but that technology doesn’t actually cure anything. But if it doesn’t cure anything, what does it do?

One of the most important principles of supportive care in the pediatric intensive care unit is that we make sure what we are doing does not make the problem worse. A good example of that is the child with a severe head injury. Although there are a few things we do to help the situation, a key aspect of what we do is the maneuvers we go through to make sure the brain is given a chance to heal without further stresses. For the child with severe pneumonia, the sort of child who is often on a mechanical ventilator machine, we do a similar thing — we use the machinery in such a way to minimize the chances that the ventilator itself does no harm, although this is not always possible.

This kind of watchful waiting at a sick child’s bedside is something parents have done for millennia. What the PICU often offers is simply an updated version of that time-honored vigil.