RT Book, Section
A1 Jones, Patricia M.
A1 Dietzen, Dennis J.
A1 Haymond, Shannon
A1 Bennett, Michael J.
SR Print(0)
ID 1146624188
T1 Preface
T2 Pediatric Laboratory Medicine
YR 2017
FD 2017
PB McGraw-Hill Education
PP New York, NY
SN 9780071840996
LK accesspediatrics.mhmedical.com/content.aspx?aid=1146624188
RD 2024/04/20
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.