Critical Care of Medically Complex Children: New Studies and Challenges
A special issue of Children (ISSN 2227-9067). This special issue belongs to the section "Pediatric Emergency Medicine & Intensive Care Medicine".
Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (5 December 2025) | Viewed by 239
Special Issue Editor
Interests: clinical epidemiology; safety systems; health services research; pediatric critical care; cohort studies; health administrative data
Special Issue Information
Dear Colleagues,
Children with special healthcare needs (CSHNs) and complex chronic conditions (CCCs) represent a heterogenous population with increased prevalence. These children are particularly at risk of rapid clinical deterioration, increased morbidity from common conditions, extended hospital length of stay, and pediatric intensive care unit admission. Critical care management of children with CCCs involves the comprehensive and multidisciplinary treatment of multisystem chronic conditions, often requiring technological dependence such as mechanical ventilation and enteral feeding. A major clinical challenge lies in the integration of specialized, high-intensity interventions with strategies aimed at minimizing harm and optimizing long-term outcomes, including quality of life. Care coordination requires good communication across various subspecialties and home care teams, in partnership with families. The preparation and transition of youth with medical complexity toward adult care is another challenging period for these children, their caregivers, and medical teams. Additionally, the psychosocial and economic burden on families is significant, requiring the inclusion of support services to address caregiver burnout, ensure adherence to complex medical regimens, and enhance overall continuity and quality of care.
This Special Issue aims to deepen our understanding of the challenges faced by children with complex chronic conditions in critical care settings, to review the current burden on the healthcare infrastructure, and to explore strategies for mitigating these challenges. We are soliciting papers employing a variety of methodological approaches that address topics such as defining this population, understanding its epidemiology and predictive factors, evaluating interventions and their outcomes, examining child and family/caregiver experiences, and identifying strategies to enhance communication, interdisciplinary collaboration, and care transitions.
Dr. Nadia Roumeliotis
Guest Editor
Manuscript Submission Information
Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 250 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for assessment.
Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Children is an international peer-reviewed open access monthly journal published by MDPI.
Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2400 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.
Keywords
- medical complexity
- special needs
- disability
- critical care
- chronic critical illness
- technology dependence
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