[Addendum 9-30-2017: Just finished reviewing the 2016 PALS Manual for my recert course. And I reviewed the PALS vital sign charts in the Manual (pp 39 and 48) and in the 2015 Handbook of Emergency Cardiovascular Care for Health Care Providers (p 77). I will put the values in this post soon. I will be using those values as they’re pretty close to the ones below and a lot more available.
Also the PALS writers were surely aware of the article that EMC cites and they went with the above vitals.
And finally, the whole reason for careful vital sign measurement and consideration is to consider whether an inappropriate tachypnea or tachycardia is due to a benign cause (fever, pain, anxiety) or an early ominous warning of danger (shock of various etiologies.
So I’m going with the PALS vital signs above. But didn’t want to delete the post below because of links and resources.]
The following chart and text are from Emergency Medicine Cases #92 – PALS Guidelines.
I have already posted some excerpts on this blog from the above show notes at Early Identification And Treatment of Pediatric Sepsis – Help From EMC #93 – PALS Guidelines Posted on March 22, 2017.
However, I wanted the updated Pediatric Vital Signs chart and text in its own post [And you can download a pdf pocket card of the Updated Vital Signs from Emergency Medicine Cases]:
Resources:
Normal ranges of heart rate and respiratory rate in children from birth to 18 years of age: a systematic review of observational studies [PubMed Abstract] [Full Text PMC] [Full Text PDF]. Lancet. 2011 Mar 19;377(9770):1011-8. doi: 10.1016/S0140-6736(10)62226-X. Fleming S et al.
