Introduction: Early identification of children at high risk of mortality properly is essential for timely changes in the management and enhancement of the clinical outcomes.
Aim of the study: This work aims to use some of the simple red blood cells (RBCs), white blood cells (WBCs), and platelet indices present in routine complete blood count (CBC) done to all critically ill patients as a pragmatic marker for outcome in pediatric critical illness.
Patients and Methods: This cross-sectional study was conducted on 103 children admitted to the pediatric intensive care unit of El- Sayed Galal university hospital and they were selected by a simple random method during the period from the beginning of December 2020 to the end of April 2021. 53 were males and 50 were female's patient ages ranged from 2 months to 14 years old and including all critically ill children admitted regardless of the underlying disease. The study was approved by the ethical committee of the faculty of medicine, Al-Azhar University. Informed parental consent from one of the parents was obtained before enrollment in this study.
Results: The commonest age of admission was from1 to 5 years old, while the highest mortality rate was in children below 1 year old. And the main causes of admission were due to respiratory problems followed by neurological insults. Regarding hematological indices it is noticed that Red blood cells(RBCs) count, hemoglobin, hematocrit (HCT), lymphocytic count, platelet count, and platlecrit (PCT) were higher in survived while Red distribution width (RDW), mean corpuscular volume (MCV), neutrophilic count, neutrophil to lymphocyte ratio (NLR) and large platelet cell ratio(L-PCR) were higher in non-survived and p-value of all were < 0.05 and all of the mean corpuscular hemoglobin(MCH), mean corpuscular hemoglobin concentration (MCHC),total leucocytic count (TLC), monocytes, eosinophils, basophils, mean platelet volume(MPV), platelet distribution width (PDW), showing no significant difference between survived and non-survived. And survived stayed longer in PICUS.
Conclusion: This study shows a significant difference between survived and non-survived regarding hematological indices (RBCs count, hemoglobin, hematocrit, MCV, RDW, neutrophil count, lymphocyte count, NLR, platelet count, PCT, L-PCR), so hematological indices is of value in predicting mortality in critically ill children admitted to PICU.