[Towards the future in pediatric intensive care].

Even today, in 2011, pediatric intensive care medicine can be regarded as a ‘‘new’’ specialty with a promising future. No more than three decades have passed from the start of the development of specific techniques for vital signs support and control in children and the establishment of differentiated wards for such patients, to structuring of the discipline as such. However, in this period of time there has been a biotechnological revolution of such magnitude that pediatric intensive care has largely experienced a change in its concepts; new methodologies have been adopted; and those who work in this field must constantly keep themselves abreast of the new developments. Good examples of these changes are the increase in number, and especially in the quality of the care units dedicated to critically ill children; the typification of techniques and systems conceived for pediatric patients; the growth in contrasted literature; the inclusion in the new training plans of topics dedicated to vital emergency care in pediatrics; and the quality and quantity of specific training programs in pediatric intensive care. There is a clear symbiosis between adult and pediatric intensive care. Pediatric Intensive Care Units (PICUs) have progressively absorbed the experience of adult ICUs, modifying and adapting protocols, adjusting techniques and designing materials appropriate for the broad range of ages, sizes and weights found in the pediatric population. However, it presently can also be affirmed that through ‘‘our children’’, adult ICUs have developed new and improved ventilation techniques such as the use of high-frequency ventilation; noninvasive techniques for monitoring gases