title: Towards evidence-based emergency medicine: best BETs from the Manchester Royal Infirmary. BET 2: what gauge and type of lumbar puncture needle should we be using in the paediatric population to reduce the risk of postdural puncture headaches?
abstract: A short-cut review was carried out to establish whether non-cutting point needles were better than cutting point needles at reducing the incidence of postdural puncture headache in children undergoing lumbar puncture for cerebrospinal fluid cultures. Three separate searches of Medline found 77 papers using the reported searches, of which six presented the best evidence to answer the clinical question. The author, date and country of publication, patient group studied, study type, relevant outcomes, results and study weaknesses of these best papers are shown in table 2. It is concluded that there is no evidence to show that non-cutting point needles are better than cutting point needles at reducing the incidence of postdural puncture headache.
authors.affiliation: St Mary’s Hospital, London, UK.
authors.forename: Anastasia
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Alcock
authors.forename: Rebecca
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Salter
mesh_terms: D002648:Child; D002675:Child, Preschool; D055416:Evidence-Based Emergency Medicine; D006801:Humans; D009339:Needles / Q000009:adverse effects; D051299:Post-Dural Puncture Headache / Q000517:prevention & control*; D013129:Spinal Puncture / Q000009:adverse effects / Q000295:instrumentation*