High Flow Nasal Cannula Oxygen Therapy can be used safely in the general paediatric ward using Paediatric Early Warning Scores

Abstract

High Flow Nasal Cannula oxygen therapy (HFNC) is nowadays widely used at paediatric intensive care units (PICU) to provide a safe and comfortable (warm and humidified) oxygen delivery in children with respiratory distress. At general paediatric wards HFNC is hardly used because intensive observation is necessary to prevent late discovery of respiratory failure and of lack of experience. Paediatric Early Warning Scores (PEWS, figure 1) are used to detect and monitor severely sick patients. In our hospital we use the PEWS as developed by Parshuram with the addition of the body temperature 1,2