Pediatric lumbar puncture rates in urban tertiary hospitals in Africa participating in the SURE pediatric tuberculous meningitis treatment trial

Pediatric lumbar puncture for CSF sampling was performed infrequently across four urban tertiary hospitals—median weekly samples ranged from 1 to 6.

• Why it matters: Underuse of lumbar puncture limits diagnosis and management of CNS infections in children in high-burden settings, motivating targeted efforts to raise LP uptake.
• What they did: In the SURE+DP diagnostic sub-study of the SURE pediatric tuberculous meningitis trial, the team quantified CSF sampling in children aged 28 days to 18 years and implemented a video plus healthcare-worker training with pre/post assessments.
• The result: Training significantly increased self-reported confidence to assist and perform pediatric LP (p-value <0.001), but CSF sampling rose by 7% in Zambia after training (p=0.002) and increased only transiently in Zimbabwe.

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