Global children's surgery: recent advances and future directions

Abstract

Purpose of review Two-thirds of the world's population lacks access to surgical care, many of them being children. This review provides an update on recent advances in global children's surgery. Recent findings Surgery is being increasingly recognized as an essential component of global and child health. There is a greater focus on sustainable collaborations between high-income countries (HICs) and low-and-middle-income countries (HICs and LMICs). Recent work provides greater insight into the global disease burden, perioperative outcomes and effective context-specific solutions. Surgery has continued to be identified as a cost-effective intervention in LMICs. There have also been substantial advances in research and advocacy for a number of childhood surgical conditions. Summary Substantial global disparities persist in the care of childhood surgical conditions. Recent work has provided greater visibility to the challenges and solutions for children's surgery in LMICs. Capacity-building and scale up of children's surgical care, more robust implementation research and ongoing advocacy are needed to increase access to children's surgical care worldwide.

Age at Primary Cleft Lip Repair: A Potential Bellwether Indicator for Pediatric Surgery

“…Research has been done to understand other potential bellwether procedures (eg, neurosurgical care 5 at the district hospital, neonatal surgery 14 ). There have also been calls to establish bellwether procedure(s) for pediatric surgery 15 , 16 as children represent a population with unique surgical needs, including anesthetic, preoperative, and postoperative capacity requirements. 17 Despite pediatric conditions accounting for a large proportion of unmet surgical needs, 18 pediatric surgery has been largely absent from discussions around surgical coverage.…”

MicroRNA-1297 suppressed the Akt/GSK3β signaling pathway and stimulated neural apoptosis in an in vivo sevoflurane exposure model

“…Millions of children undergo surgeries each year, including infants aged less than 12 months. 1 Moreover, millions of patients receive surgical treatments every year, and pediatric patients account for a large portion of neurosurgery patients. 2 Thus, the use of anesthesia is an essential process in infants and young children.…”