Ultrasound-Assisted Lumbar Puncture in Children

St. Justine's Hospital

Status: Completed

Conditions: Fever

Treatments: Radiation: ultrasound-assisted lumbar puncture

Study type: Interventional

Funder types: Other

Identifiers

NCT03099642

UALP

Details and patient eligibility

About

The aim of this study is to determine if emergency physician performed ultrasound-assisted lumbar puncture improves first-time success rates in a pediatric population. This will be done by comparison with current landmark-based approach to the procedure.

Enrollment: 166 patients

Sex: All

Ages: Under 18 years old

Volunteers: No Healthy Volunteers

Inclusion criteria

• Patient less than 19 years of age
• Requiring a lumbar puncture as part of their work-up, as determined by the treating pediatric emergency physician.

Exclusion criteria

• • Patients with known spine or spinal cord abnormalities

  • Patients with ventricular shunts
  • Patients deemed too unstable to have procedure performed
  • Patients at risk for significant bleeding (coagulopathy, thrombocytopenia, etc)
  • Parents unable to give consent or patients unable to assent for an acute reason

Trial design

Primary purpose: Diagnostic

Allocation: Randomized

Interventional model: Parallel Assignment

Masking: None (Open label)

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166 participants in 2 patient groups

Ultrasound assisted lumbar puncture

Experimental group

Description:

The intervention of interest will be the ultrasound-assisted lumbar puncture (UALP). To do this, the treating physician will perform a bedside ultrasound of the spine to identify and mark the level of the conus medullaris and preferred puncture site prior to LP

Treatment:

Radiation: ultrasound-assisted lumbar puncture

Standard lumbar puncture

No Intervention group

Description:

The control group will have a standard landmark-based lumbar puncture