ArticlePediatric critical care medicine : a journal of the Society of Critical Care Medicine and the World Federation of Pediatric Intensive and Critical Care Societies2025
Sepsis in Critically Ill Children in Bolivia: Multicenter Retrospective Evaluation of the Phoenix Criteria for Sepsis in a 2023 Cohort.
Article in Pediatric critical care medicine : a journal of the Society of Critical Care Medicine and the World Federation of Pediatric Intensive and Critical Care Societies, 2025. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 5 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
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
5 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it.
- Adverse events and predictive probability of peripheral vasopressor administration in pediatric shock: integrating frequentist and hierarchical Bayesian meta-analyses.Frontiers in pediatrics · 2025Pooled it
- Discrimination performance of the Phoenix sepsis score versus pediatric sequential organ failure assessment for predicting in-hospital mortality in critically ill children: a multicenter external validation study.World journal of pediatrics : WJP · 2026Article
- Pediatric Emergency Department Care for Septic Shock in Sub-Saharan Africa: Single-Center Outcomes Before-Vs.-After Implementation of a Telesimulation Program, 2023-2024.Pediatric critical care medicine : a journal of the Society of Critical Care Medicine and the World Federation of Pediatric Intensive and Critical Care Societies · 2026Article
- The Phoenix Criteria and Other Severity Scores in Identifying Pediatric Sepsis.JAMA network open · 2026Article
- Risk factors for mortality and development of a predictive model in pediatric sepsis.Frontiers in pediatrics · 2025Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
20 authors.
Funding
Abstract
objectivesWe evaluated the Phoenix criteria and the Phoenix Sepsis Score in a multicenter retrospective cohort of critically ill children with a clinical diagnosis of sepsis or septic shock in Bolivia. In addition, we aimed to assess whether management in a PICU at high altitude in the Bolivian Andes was associated with the performance of the respiratory dysfunction component in the Phoenix Sepsis Score.
designMulticenter retrospective cohort study.
settingFourteen PICUs in Bolivia. PATIENTS: Children admitted to the PICU with a clinical diagnosis of sepsis or septic shock from January 2023 to December 2023.
interventionsNone. MEASUREMENTS AND MAIN
resultsThere were 273 patients with a diagnosis of sepsis in 2023, of which 257 (94.1%) met the 2024 Phoenix criteria for sepsis, and 166 (60.8%) met the systemic inflammatory response syndrome (SIRS)-based criteria for sepsis. Among the 257 patients meeting Phoenix sepsis criteria, 86 died (33.5%). Of the patients with Phoenix-based sepsis, there were 100 of 257 (38.9%) who were SIRS-negative, and 27 of 100 died (27.0%). After correcting the oxygenation indices for altitude, 149 of 273 patients (54.6%) had a lower Phoenix respiratory score and an associated mortality more consistent with the expected mortality of the newly derived subscore. Patients at higher altitudes had higher hemoglobin levels and higher estimated oxygen carrying capacity, and these data were independently associated with lower odds of mortality after controlling for altitude-corrected Phoenix score.
conclusionsIn this 2023, retrospective cohort of PICU patients with sepsis in Bolivia, we have found that the majority met the 2024 Phoenix sepsis criteria, but less than two-thirds met the SIRS-based criteria for diagnosis. However, the respiratory score in the Phoenix criteria overestimated the severity of respiratory dysfunction in more than half of the cohort, likely because the score does not take account of the Andean adaptation to high altitude, with higher oxygen carrying capacity.
Indexed as
Identifiers
What OpenQuestion holds
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.