Developmental Care in the Early Years in Pediatric Intensive Care Patients as a Strategy to Mitigate Pediatric Post-Intensive-Care Syndrome: A Narrative Review

Abstract

Survivors after pediatric critical care often have adverse sequelae in domains of cognition, executive function, attention, memory, visual-spatial skills, language, motor function, behavior, and emotional functioning, the post-intensive-care syndrome pediatric (PICS-p). The time from birth to approximately age 2 years is a period of rapid structural and functional brain development. The fundamental structural and functional architecture of the brain is in place by the second year of life. This narrative review focuses on how we, in the pediatric intensive care unit (PICU), can work towards maximizing each patient's full potential despite adverse experiences during hospitalization. In part I, concepts relevant to understanding the effects of hospitalization in PICU on brain development are clarified, including concepts of toxic stress and trauma, sensitive periods and cascades, experience-expectant neural plasticity in the early years, and resilience and buffering of adversity focused on relational care. In part II, evidence is presented that these concepts are important because they describe the effects of early childhood adversity that are pervasive on physical health, cognitive, and emotional outcomes throughout the lifespan. Evidence is presented to show that intervention to improve these outcomes can be effective. In part III, the concepts and evidence are synthesized by focusing on the opportunity before us, what we must and can do better while patients are in the PICU, in order to improve their long-term lifelong outcomes. We present evidence to argue that we in pediatric critical care must take a public-health approach to address the key environmental conditions necessary for optimal early childhood development and hence facilitate children's ability to thrive. Future research must aim to determine what works best and what does not work in the PICU. Early childhood investments to improve lifelong outcomes have great potential to help patients and reduce the growing burden of healthcare costs.

Keywords: childhood adversity; experience-expectant neural plasticity; outcomes; post intensive care syndrome pediatric; sensitive period; the early years; toxic stress.