Pitt Pediatrics congratulates Hitoshi G. Koshiya, MD, Julie Hauer, MD, Justin A. Yu, MD, MS, Laura Kirkpatrick, MD, and Alyssa Zuziak, DO, for their recent award recognition from the American Academy of Hospice and Palliative Medicine (AAHPM)! This research group is a cross-disciplinary group of physician scientists from our Divisions of Hospice and Palliative Care Medicine, Neurology and Child Development, and Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation, and their poster abstract was the highest scored peer-reviewed abstract accepted by the 2024 Annual Assembly Planning Committee of the AAHPM.
The poster abstract, titled, “A National Survey Describing Management Patterns for Pediatric Paroxysmal Sympathetic Hyperactivity,” was awarded the Assembly’s 2024 AAHPM Poster Abstract Award. It will be featured on the AAHPM website and in the Journal of Pain and Symptom Management in the Spring 2024 issue. More information can be found on the AAPHM website here.
The overall goal of the group’s research was to describe and better detail the current trends in pharmacologic management of paroxysmal sympathetic hyperactivity (PSH) among pediatric physicians. While PSH is a relatively common source of discomfort among patients with severe neurological impairment, there are currently no studies that broadly describe drug treatment patterns among pediatric clinicians, meaning best practice recommendations rely solely on expert opinion.
To address this issue, Koshiya, et al., surveyed nearly 300 physicians across multiple specialties over the course of 6 months, about their treatment preferences for PSH. The researchers ultimately concluded that the pharmacologic management of pediatric PSH was significantly varied, especially across subspecialties. This implies that future work is necessary in order to improve, standardize, and determine best-practice recommendations for PSH management.
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