The new NICHD CPCCRN, which the National Center for Medical Rehabilitation Research (NCMRR) began funding in April 2005, will serve as a national resource for studying the scientific bases of pediatric critical care medicine. The Network consists of six clinical centers, chosen on the basis of proposed scientific work, patient ethnicity, and concordance with programmatic objectives. A Data Coordinating Center supports the Network using cutting-edge informatics to manage the complexities of the emerging collaborative research.
Several convergent developments in critical care medicine, as well as in the larger medical, scientific, and national communities, were fundamental to the NICHD decision to develop and maintain a collaborative infrastructure in the form of the CPCCRN. For example, critical care medicine has introduced a number of management and innovative methodologies without evidence from controlled observation and objective evaluation to support their use. Another major problem is in attempts to balance assuring prompt implementation of new technologies, procedures, treatments, and drugs with evaluating their safety, efficacy, cost/risk/benefit ratios, and effects on developmental and family outcomes. In addition, modalities of mechanical ventilation, non-invasive ventilation, circulatory support, organ transplantation, and extracorporeal life support have extended therapeutic options to children previously thought to be beyond the reach of state-of-the-art therapy. The use of less-invasive techniques in neurosurgery, general, orthopedic, reconstructive, vascular, and cardiovascular surgeries, as well as in the implementation of newer techniques for respiratory and circulatory support, are also central to the radical changes in mortality now achievable with state-of-the-art pediatric critical care medicine.
As a result, children in higher risk groups who are victims of critical illness and/or injury, and those who might benefit from surgical interventions that were once infeasible are benefiting from pediatric critical care in increasing numbers. In light of these issues, the NICHD intended the CPCCRN to support a substantial range of research activities, reaching across traditional disciplinary lines and transcending customary thinking and organizational structures to achieve innovative research in the care of critically ill and injured children.
For more information, visit The National Collaborative Pediatric Critical Care Research Network Web site.
