Patient involvement in healthcare has become increasingly important, not only as an expression of respect for autonomy but also as a means of empowering individuals to safeguard their care. In blood transfusion, informed consent is a critical tool for shared decision-making. This protocol outlines a scoping review to map how transfusion consent processes and forms are used globally and to characterise their key features. We aim to identify technologies used to obtain consent, evaluate compliance with international recommendations, describe practices in special populations and examine patients’ and families’ understanding of the consent process.

Following the Joanna Briggs Institute methodology, we will search PubMed, Embase, LILACS, Web of Science and Scopus; grey literature will be explored via Google Scholar and the Open Access Theses and Dissertations platform. No language or date restrictions will be applied. Reference lists of included studies will also be screened. Two reviewers will independently screen studies and chart data; disagreements will be resolved by a third reviewer. Synthesis will be diagrammatic/tabular with structured narrative, reported according to Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses: extension for Scoping Reviews. Where data allow, findings will be stratified by clinical setting. A stakeholder consultation with two transfusion medicine experts and two patient representatives will be undertaken to validate and refine interpretations.

Only publicly available sources will be used; research ethics approval is not required. Findings will be submitted to a peer-reviewed journal and presented at scientific meetings.

10.17605/OSF.IO/NU69J.

Unplanned hospital readmission (UHR) after paediatric neurosurgery is an important indicator of surgical outcomes. As this field deals with complex cases, there is an increased likelihood of potential complications and the subsequent need for readmission. We estimated paediatric neurosurgery UHR rates globally and identified significant factors contributing to 30-day and 90-day UHR rates in children undergoing neurosurgical procedures.

A systematic review was conducted following the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses guidelines.

Embase, Medline, CINAHL and Global Index Medicus databases were searched on 17th December 2023.

We included studies that reported unplanned readmissions in the paediatric population within 30 days and 90 days of an index neurosurgical procedure.

Two independent qualified researchers screened studies and extracted data using standardised methods. Risk of bias assessment was done using the Newcastle-Ottawa scale. Narrative synthesis was performed.

2593 titles were identified following the search strategy. 52 studies were included after screening, full-text review and quality appraisal. Most studies were from the USA and are retrospective cohorts. The majority were cranial procedures (n=30), with common ones being shunt procedures for hydrocephalus and cranial tumour resections. 30-day readmissions ranged from 1.4% to 28% while 90-day readmissions ranged from 1.31% to 38.64%. 34 different risk factors were identified. Aetiology-related factors, procedure-specific complexities and age emerged as the three most common. Other common risk factors were complex chronic conditions, race, length of hospital stay and type of medical insurance. The patient’s age was a significant non-modifiable predictor, with younger children generally facing higher odds compared with their older counterparts across different procedures. While early readmissions could be due to disease progression, some were linked to preventable causes. Heterogeneity was also present due to variations in definitions and inclusion of studies from both national databases and single institutions.

Findings from this study contribute to a collective understanding of factors affecting unplanned readmissions in paediatric neurosurgery. UHRs reflect the interplay among surgical complexity, patient characteristics such as age and disease aetiology.

COVID-19 in children is generally of short duration, but some may take longer to recover. This study investigated the time to symptom resolution following SARS-CoV-2 infection among children in a community setting on the outskirts of an urban centre in Brazil.

Prospective cohort study.

This is a community-based cohort of children living in Manguinhos, a favela in Rio de Janeiro. The cohort was followed through home visits and telephone monitoring of symptoms. The analysis focused on symptomatic children from this cohort with confirmed SARS-CoV-2 infection. Recovery time was defined as the interval between the first date with symptoms and the first date without symptoms following a positive SARS-CoV-2 test.

A total of 1276 children (boys and girls aged 2–

COVID-19 recovery time, assessed based on change points on the symptom persistence probability curve (Kaplan-Meier).

Among children who tested positive, 148 (60%) were symptomatic. The median recovery time was 11 days (IQR: 7–16). Two inflection points were identified on the Kaplan-Meier curve: days 16 and 34. Children who were ill during the Omicron wave took longer to recover. More boys became asymptomatic within the first 15 days; about 93% of girls recovered by day 33, and boys were more common among those who recovered in ≥34 days. Children aged 6–

Among children from a vulnerable area in Rio de Janeiro, recovery time was longer than that reported in other countries, with 9.5% of children experiencing persistent symptoms for more than 33 days. These findings are crucial for understanding the implications of COVID-19 in specific socioeconomic contexts and the dynamics of paediatric recovery in community settings.