Trends over time in drug administration during pediatric in-hospital cardiac arrest in the United States

AIMS: To describe trends in pediatric in-hospital cardiac arrest drug administration and to assess temporal associations of the Pediatric Advanced Life Support (PALS) guideline changes with drug usage.METHODS: Pediatric patients RESULTS: A total of 6107 patients were analyzed. The adjusted odds of receiving lidocaine (0.33; 95% CI, 0.18, 0.61; p CONCLUSIONS: Changes to the PALS guidelines for lidocaine and bicarbonate were not temporally associated with acute changes in the use of these medications; however, better alignment with these updates was observed over time. A minor update to the language surrounding atropine in the PALS text was associated with a modest acute change in the observed use of atropine. Future studies exploring other factors that influence prescribers in pediatric IHCA are needed.