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There are no agreed upon terminology to define “refractory” pediatric immune thrombocytopenia (ITP). Guidelines are therefore limited to arbitrary and outdated definitions. The Pediatric ITP Consortium of North America held a meeting in 2023 to define this entity. With 100% agreement, the faculty established that pediatric ITP that is refractory to emergent therapy could be defined as no platelet response after treatment with all eligible emergent pharmacotherapies. With 100% agreement, the working group established that pediatric patients with ITP that continue to demonstrate high disease burden and/or no platelet response despite treatment with multiple classes of disease-modifying therapies represent a challenging subset of ITP. These patients are at higher risk of ongoing disease burden and merit additional investigation as well as consideration for clinical trials or novel therapies. Future efforts to define disease burden and disease response will be completed in collaboration with the ITP International Working Group.

Several letters to the editor are presented in response to articles in previous issues including an article related to Boulder Bicycling Commuters and "Tri It, You'll Like It" in the August 2008 issue, and "Booby-Trap Your Bike" in the July 2008 issue.

Presents a letter to the editor in response to the article "Boys and the Five-Year Void," by Ray Nicolle in the March issue.