Reply to comment on "Pediatric intensive care: result of a European survey"

Excerpt

Sir: We thank López-Herce et al. [1] for their interest in our paper reporting the results of a Europe-wide survey among members of the European Society of Paediatric and Neonatal Intensive Care (ESPNIC). They challenge the validity of our findings mainly on the basis that ESPNIC membership may not provide a representative sample of European PICUs. This point has some merit, as indeed was pointed out repeatedly in our paper in the methods and discussion section. However, the fact remains that the ESPNIC database provides the only uniform source of information available for all European member states. Although the literature provides additional information for some countries (such as Spain, as López-Herce et al. point out, and for some other countries including The Netherlands), such information is not available for all countries. In addition, not all European countries have national pediatric intensive care societies. López-Herce et al. suggest that we should have used such additional sources of information, or gone through national pediatric intensive care societies. However, to have used such alternative sources for some countries that would not have been available for others would have reduced the comparability of our results. …