Technical Tips & Tricks Series: Pediatrics

Roya Tompkins
Sep 24
2 min read

It’s been awhile since we have posted for this series.

Today’s focus:

How to best set up a Pediatric patient.

This age population as one would expect takes more time and definitely more patience; however, the importance of a quality recording remains the same and keeping that as our goal will help.

Preparation can be key to this success.

Communicating with the parent ahead of time can go a long way.
Sending resources and photos or having them posted on your clinic’s website can also help them to know what to expect.
Parents can help prepare their child by explaining that it won’t hurt. Ask parents to describe the room and the equipment that will be used, and to reassure their child that they’ll be right there for support.

Still, having electrodes pasted to the scalp can be a little stressful for kids, as can lying still during the test.

One other helpful suggestion is to have them arrive with clean hair washed on the day of the appointment.

As with all EEG procedures a sleep recording is very useful.

The following instructions could be helpful for sleep deprived routines:

5 years and older having no more than 4 hours of sleep. A good time frame for sleep would be midnight-4:00 a.m.
2 - 4 years old should go to sleep 2 hours later than usual and wake up 2 hours earlier than usual.
6 - 23 months should wake up 2 hours earlier than usual.
Newborns - 5 months old try to arrange their nap to fall during their test time.