Our study indicates that high-flow nasal cannula improves the respiratory scale score, the oxygen saturation, and the patient's COMFORT scale. Its mechanism of action is application of mild positive airway pressure and lung volume recruitment.

In the group of patients with severe brain injuries treated with standard therapy plus amantadine sulphate the outcome GCS was higher and the case fatality rate lower than in the group treated with standard therapy alone.

Chronic lung disease, subglottic stenosis, and combinations are the most common causes for tracheostomy at present followed for tracheostomy due to neurological problems. Children requiring tracheostomy have lengthy hospital stay. Establishing an accurate diagnosis helps predict the length of hospitalization and the need for home ventilation; however, in less clear cases, the length of stay can be predicted from the presence of pulmonary hypertension, reflux, and failure to thrive. The mortality rate is low at the postoperative period and increases depending upon the underline reason for tracheostomy referral.

The article summarizes current information on blood pressure changes in children during clinic visit. White coat as a general dressing of physicians and health care personnel has been widely accepted at the end of the 19th century. Two problems can be associated with the use of white coat: white coat phenomenon and white coat hypertension. Children often attribute pain and other unpleasant experience to the white coat and refuse afterwards cooperation with examinations. Definition of white coat hypertension in the literature is not uniform. It has been defined as elevated blood pressure in the hospital or clinic with normal blood pressure at home measured during the day by ambulatory blood pressure monitoring system. White coat effect is defined as temporary increase in blood pressure before and during visit in the clinic, regardless what the average daily ambulatory blood pressure values are. Clinical importance of white coat hypertension is mainly because of higher risk for cardiovascular accidents that are dependent on end organ damage (heart, vessels, kidney). Current data do not allow any clear recommendations for the treatment. Pharmacological therapy is usually started in the presence of hypertrophic left ventricle, changes in intimal/medial wall thickness of carotic arteries, microalbuminuria and other cardiovascular risk factors. Nonpharmacological therapy is less controversial and certainly more appropriate. Patients have to change their life style, need to eliminate as much cardiovascular risk factors as possible and sustain a regular blood pressure monitoring.

Between 1976 and 1986, the authors treated 33 children with Schönlein-Henoch purpura (S-H purpura), with physiological urinary finding on admission. Twenty-three of them received prednisone already at the beginning of hospitalization, 10 were not given any prednisone at all. In patients with prednisone, nephropathy occurred only once (4.3%), in those without prednisone it occurred 5 times (50%), the incidence being thus significantly higher. Prednisone was administered in doses ranging between 1.0 and 2.5 mg/kg body mass/day, on an average for 21 days (first 10 days in the same dose, later in reduced doses). Since there is a general lack of data on the positive effect of steroids upon the prevention of nephropathies in S-H purpura, the authors recommend more thorough studies in the initial stage of the disease (before the development of nephropathies).