The transition to competency-based medical education (CBME) and adoption of the foundational domains of competence by the Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education, Association of American Medical Colleges (AAMC), and American Board of Medical Specialties' certification and maintenance of certification (MOC) programs provided an unprecedented opportunity for the pediatrics community to create a model of learning and assessment across the continuum. Two frameworks for assessment in CBME have been promoted: (1) entrustable professional activities (EPAs) and (2) milestones that define a developmental trajectory for individual competencies. EPAs are observable and measureable units of work that can be mapped to competencies and milestones critical to performing them safely and effectively.The pediatrics community integrated the two frameworks to create a potential pathway of learning and assessment across the continuum from undergraduate medical education (UME) to graduate medical education (GME) and from GME to practice. The authors briefly describe the evolution of the Pediatrics Milestone Project and the process for identifying EPAs for the specialty and subspecialties of pediatrics. The method of integrating EPAs with competencies and milestones through a mapping process is discussed, and an example is provided. The authors illustrate the alignment of the AAMC's Core EPAs for Entering Residency with the general pediatrics EPAs and, in turn, the alignment of the latter with the subspecialty EPAs, thus helping build the bridge between UME and GME. The authors propose how assessment in GME, based on EPAs and milestones, can guide MOC to complete the bridge across the education continuum.

Objective The relationship between acute care clinical indicators in the first severe Pediatric traumatic brain injury (TBI) Guidelines and outcomes have not been examined. We aimed to develop a set of acute care guideline-influenced clinical indicators of adherence and tested the relationship between these indicators during the first 72 hours after hospital admission and discharge outcomes. Design Retrospective multicenter cohort study Setting Five regional pediatric trauma centers affiliated with academic medical centers. Patients Children under 17 years with severe TBI (admission Glasgow coma scale (GCS) score ≤ 8, ICD-9 diagnosis codes of 800.0-801.9, 803.0-804.9, 850.0-854.1, 959.01, 950.1-950.3, 995.55, maximum head abbreviated injury severity score ≥ 3) who received tracheal intubation for at-least 48 hours in the intensive care unit (ICU) between 2007 -2011 were examined. Interventions None Measurements and Main Results Total percent adherence to the clinical indicators across all treatment locations (pre-hospital [PH], emergency department [ED], operating room [OR], and intensive care unit [ICU]) during the first 72 hours after admission to study center were determined. Main outcomes were discharge survival and Glasgow outcome scale (GOS) score. Total adherence rate across all locations and all centers ranged from 68-78%. Clinical indicators of adherence were associated with survival (aHR 0.94; 95 % CI 0.91, 0.96). Three indicators were associated with survival: absence of PH hypoxia (aHR 0.20; 95% CI 0.08, 0.46), early ICU start of nutrition (aHR 0.06; 95% CI 0.01, 0.26), and ICU PaCO2 >30 mm Hg in the absence of radiographic or clinical signs of cerebral herniation (aHR 0.22; 95% CI 0.06, 0.8). Clinical indicators of adherence were associated with favorable GOS among survivors, (aHR 0.99; 95% CI 0.98, 0.99). Three indicators were associated with favorable discharge GOS: all OR CPP >40 mm Hg (aRR 0.64; 95% CI 0.55, 0.75), all ICU CPP > 40mm Hg (aRR 0.74; 95% CI 0.63, 0.87), and no surgery (any type; aRR 0.72; 95% CI 0.53, 0.97). Conclusions Acute care clinical indicators of adherence to the Pediatric Guidelines were associated with significantly higher discharge survival and improved discharge GOS. Some indicators were protective, regardless of treatment location, suggesting the need for an interdisciplinary approach to the care of children with severe TBI.

An increasing body of evidence demonstrates the importance of establishing age-dependent guidelines for physiological monitoring, pharmacological intervention, management of intracranial pressure and facilitating recovery of function.

Environmental isolates of the fungus Rhizopus have been shown to harbor a bacterial endosymbiont (Burkholderia) that produces rhixozin, a plant mycotoxin. We sought to define the role of rhizoxin production by endosymbionts in the pathogenesis of mucormycosis. Endosymbiotic bacteria were identified by polymerase chain reaction in 15 (54%) of 28 clinical isolates of Zygomycetes, with 33% of the bacterial strains showing ≥87% identity to Burkholderia 16S rDNA. The presence of rhizoxin in myclial extracts from fungi harboring bacteria was confirmed by high-performance liquid chromatography analysis. However, fungal strains with or without endosymbionts did not differ in their ability to cause endothelial cell injury in vitro, nor did antibiotic-mediated eradication of endosymbionts and rhizoxin production decrease the virulence of fungal strains in mice or flies. In summary, although bacterial endosymbiosis is widely detected in clinical isolates of Zygomycetes, including Rhizopus oryzae strains, we found no evidence that bacterial endosymbionts and rhizoxin contribute to the pathogenesis of mucormycosis in the models studied.

Traumatic brain injury (TBI) often results in traumatic axonal injury and white matter (WM) damage, particularly to the corpus callosum (CC).Damage to the CC can lead to impaired performance on neurocognitive tasks, but there is a high degree of heterogeneity in impairment following TBI. Here we examined the relation between CC microstructure and function in pediatric TBI. We used high angular resolution diffusion-weighted imaging (DWI) to evaluate the structural integrity of the CC in humans following brain injury in a sample of 32 children (23 males and 9 females) with moderate-to-severe TBI (msTBI) at 1-5 months postinjury, compared with well matched healthy control children. We assessed CC function through interhemispheric transfer time (IHTT) as measured using eventrelated potentials (ERPs), and related this to DWI measures of WM integrity. Finally, the relation between DWI and IHTT results was supported by additional results of neurocognitive performance assessed using a single composite performance scale. Half of the msTBI participants (16 participants) had significantly slower IHTTs than the control group. This slow IHTT group demonstrated lower CC integrity (lower fractional anisotropy and higher mean diffusivity) and poorer neurocognitive functioning than both the control group and the msTBI group with normal IHTTs. Lower fractional anisotropy-a common sign of impaired WM-and slower IHTTs also predicted poor neurocognitive function. This study reveals that there is a subset of pediatric msTBI patients during the post-acute phase of injury who have markedly impaired CC functioning and structural integrity that is associated with poor neurocognitive functioning. Key words: corpus callosum; DTI; ERP; interhemispheric transfer time; traumatic brain injury Significance StatementTraumatic brain injury (TBI) is the primary cause of death and disability in children and adolescents. There is considerable heterogeneity in postinjury outcome, which is only partially explained by injury severity. Imaging biomarkers may help explain some of this variance, as diffusion weighted imaging is sensitive to the white matter disruption that is common after injury. The corpus callosum (CC) is one of the most commonly reported areas of disruption. In this multimodal study, we discovered a divergence within our pediatric moderate-to-severe TBI sample 1-5 months postinjury. A subset of the TBI sample showed significant impairment in CC function, which is supported by additional results showing deficits in CC structural integrity. This subset also had poorer neurocognitive functioning. Our research sheds light on postinjury heterogeneity.

The supervision scales developed for these six common pediatric subspecialty EPAs demonstrated strong validity evidence for use in EPA-based assessment of pediatric fellows. They may also inform the development of scales in other specialties.

Traumatic brain injury (TBI) is the leading cause of death and disability in children and can lead to a wide range of impairments. Brain imaging methods such as DTI (diffusion tensor imaging) are uniquely sensitive to the white matter (WM) damage that is common in TBI. However, higher-level analyses using tractography are complicated by the damage and decreased FA (fractional anisotropy) characteristic of TBI, which can result in premature tract endings. We used the newly developed autoMATE (automated multi-atlas tract extraction) method to identify differences in WM integrity. 63 pediatric patients aged 8–19 years with moderate/severe TBI were examined with cross sectional scanning at one or two time points after injury: a post-acute assessment 1–5 months post-injury and a chronic assessment 13–19 months post-injury. A battery of cognitive function tests was performed in the same time periods. 56 children were examined in the first phase, 28 TBI patients and 28 healthy controls. In the second phase 34 children were studied, 17 TBI patients and 17 controls (27 participants completed both post-acute and chronic phases). We did not find any significant group differences in the post-acute phase. Chronically, we found extensive group differences, mainly for mean and radial diffusivity (MD and RD). In the chronic phase, we found higher MD and RD across a wide range of WM. Additionally, we found correlations between these WM integrity measures and cognitive deficits. This suggests a distributed pattern of WM disruption that continues over the first year following a TBI in children.

Treatment with hyperbaric oxygen after ischemia increased the amount of oxygen free radicals in the brain. However, this increase in free radical generation was not associated with an increase in lipid peroxidation or a reduction in neurophysiologic recovery when measured after 75 mins of recirculation. These results suggest that hyperbaric oxygen administered immediately after global ischemia does not promote early brain injury.