Observational studyBMC pediatrics2019
Value of parental concern and clinician's gut feeling in recognition of serious bacterial infections: a prospective observational study.
Observational study in BMC pediatrics, 2019. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 13 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
What it found
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
13 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it, 22 citations in OpenAlex.
- Pooled it
- Effects of Use of Primary Care Checklists and of Extent of Clinical Experience on Performance in Interpreting Paediatric ECGs Linked to Risk of Sudden Cardiac Death.Healthcare (Basel, Switzerland) · 2026Article
- Parental Ability to Identify Severe Illnesses in Their Children.JAMA network open · 2026Article
- Physicians' appraisal of parental concerns: a qualitative assessment.The British journal of general practice : the journal of the Royal College of General Practitioners · 2025Article
- Caregiver alignment with triage acuity levels and drivers for discrepancy between caregiver assessment and triage acuity levels: a cross-sectional questionnaire based study.BMC health services research · 2025Article
- The linguistic validation of the gut feelings questionnaire in Turkish.The European journal of general practice · 2023Article
- How patients in general practice voice and value their gut feelings about health: a qualitative interview study.The British journal of general practice : the journal of the Royal College of General Practitioners · 2023Article
- Impact of parental and healthcare professional concern on the diagnosis of pediatric sepsis: a diagnostic accuracy study.Frontiers in pediatrics · 2023Article
- Guideline adherence in febrile children below 3 months visiting European Emergency Departments: an observational multicenter study.European journal of pediatrics · 2022Observational
- SBI is uncommon in the absence of paediatricians' gut feeling and abnormal respiratory pattern.Acta paediatrica (Oslo, Norway : 1992) · 2022Article
- Integrating Clinical Signs at Presentation and Clinician's Non-analytical Reasoning in Prediction Models for Serious Bacterial Infection in Febrile Children Presenting to Emergency Department.Frontiers in pediatrics · 2022Article
- Article
- The Role of Caregiver-Reported Risks in Predicting Adverse Pediatric Outcomes.Journal of pediatric psychology · 2020Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
4 authors at 2 institutions in 1 country.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
backgroundSerious bacterial infections (SBI) are a significant cause of mortality worldwide. Parental concern and clinician's gut feeling that there is something wrong has been associated with increased likelihood of developing SBI in primary care studies. The aim of this study is to assess the diagnostic value of parental concern and gut feeling at the emergency department of a tertiary hospital.
methodsThis prospective observational study included children with fever attending the emergency department of Children's Clinical University hospital in Riga between October 2017 and July 2018. Data were collected via parental and clinician questionnaires. "Gut feeling" was defined as intuitive feeling that the child may have a serious illness, and "Sense of reassurance" as a feeling that the child has a self-limiting illness. "Parental concern" was defined as impression that this illness is different from previous illnesses. SBI included bacterial meningitis, sepsis, bacteraemia, pneumonia, urinary tract infection, appendicitis, bacterial gastroenteritis, and osteomyelitis. Pearson's Chi-Squared test or Fisher's exact test were used to compare the variables between children with and without SBI. Positive likelihood ratio was calculated for "gut feeling", "sense of reassurance", and parental concern.
resultsThe study included 162 patients aged 2 months to 17.8 years. Forty-six patients were diagnosed with SBI. "Sense of reassurance" expressed by all clinicians was associated with lower likelihood of SBI (positive likelihood ratio 8.8, 95% confidence interval 2.2-34.8). "Gut feeling" was not significantly predictive of the patient being diagnosed with SBI (positive likelihood ratio 3.1, 95% confidence interval 1.9-5.1), The prognostic rule-in value of parental concern was insignificant (positive likelihood ratio 1.4, 95% confidence interval 1.1-1.7).
conclusionSense of reassurance was useful in ruling out SBI. Parental concern was not significantly predictive of SBI.
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.