Syncope In Pediatric Patients: A Practical Approach To Differential Diagnosis And Management In The Emergency Department

Syncope is a condition that is often seen in the emergency department. Most syncope is benign, but it can be a symptom of a life-threatening condition. While syncope often requires an extensive workup in adults, in the pediatric population, critical questioning and simple, noninvasive testing is usually sufficient to exclude significant or life-threatening causes. For low-risk patients, resource-intensive workups are rarely diagnostic, and add significant cost to medical care. This issue will highlight critical diseases that cause syncope, identify high-risk "red flags," and enable the emergency clinician to develop a cost-effective, minimally invasive algorithm for the diagnosis and treatment of pediatric syncope.