Sending an infant home with apparently mild bronchiolitis to have him or her return dead shortly thereafter is every parent and physicians nightmare. Such eventualities are rare but they do repeatedly. They occur because central apnea typically occurs early in bronchiolitis when the disease itself is mild and clinicians will be inclined to send the child home.

Some of these rare but tragic deaths could be prevented by applying the clinical rules presented in research which the foundation supported.

This foundation supported research finally saw publication in Pediatrics in November. The article “Derivation of Candidate Clinical Decision Rules to Identify Infants at Risk for Central Apnea” represents the culmination of a decade of work by foundation members. In addition to the eight years spent in recruitment, study design, institution review board approval, analysis, and re-analysis based on the input of audience comments at scientific meetings, and finally writing manuscript took a great deal of time. Ultimately the rules presented are a subset of many possible rules and a possible next step is to perform a futility type study to try and eliminate some of these while preparing the groundwork for multi-center validation derived.

The authors of this study were Paul Walsh, Pádraig Cunningham, Sabrina Merchant, Nicholas Walker, Jacquelyn Heffner, Lucas Shanholtzer, Stephen J. Rothenberg but a great deal of additional work was performed by the very many research volunteers who rotated through the clinical site eight years during which the study was performed.

The paper you read here http://pediatrics.aappublications.org/content/136/5/e1228 There is a pay wall. Foundation supporters should contact us for a free reprint.