TY - CHAP M1 - Book, Section TI - Preface A1 - Jones, Patricia M. A1 - Dietzen, Dennis J. A1 - Haymond, Shannon A1 - Bennett, Michael J. PY - 2017 T2 - Pediatric Laboratory Medicine AB - In the field of pediatric laboratory medicine (PLM), one of the truisms that you hear over and over is that “children are not small adults.” This saying is a truism for a reason. Metabolically and biochemically children are often as different from adults as it is possible to be. The basic chemical and hematological components of blood, urine, cerebral spinal fluid, and other body fluids are often more diverse and almost always more dynamic than comparable components in adults. A pediatric patient is rarely static in any way. Even when physically well, an infant and child is constantly growing and changing, and analytes that we measure in blood and other body fluids reflect those changes. In contrast to infants and children, a chemical component in an adult may not change much over multiple decades unless the person has a pathophysiological problem occurring; however, in an infant these parameters may change hourly. Total bilirubin measurements are a good example of this type of rapid changes in infancy. SN - PB - McGraw-Hill Education CY - New York, NY Y2 - 2024/03/28 UR - accesspediatrics.mhmedical.com/content.aspx?aid=1146624188 ER -