The American journal of emergency medicine
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Randomized Controlled Trial Comparative Study
Randomized comparison of three guidewire insertion depths on incidence of arrhythmia during central venous catheterization.
Guidewire-induced arrhythmias that occur during central venous catheterization can progress to malignant arrhythmias in rare cases. This study compared the incidence of arrhythmia during central venous catheterization using three different depths of guidewire insertion into the right internal jugular vein. ⋯ During central venous catheterization through the right internal jugular vein, inserting guidewires to depths of 15 or 17.5cm before tissue dilation reduced the incidence of arrhythmic episodes compared to a depth of 20cm.
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Chest imaging plays a prominent role in blunt trauma patient evaluation, but indiscriminate imaging is expensive, may delay care, and unnecessarily exposes patients to potentially harmful ionizing radiation. To improve diagnostic chest imaging utilization, we conducted 3 prospective multicenter studies over 12years to derive and validate decision instruments (DIs) to guide the use of chest x-ray (CXR) and chest computed tomography (CT). The first DI, NEXUS Chest x-ray, consists of seven criteria (Age >60years; rapid deceleration mechanism; chest pain; intoxication; altered mental status; distracting painful injury; and chest wall tenderness) and exhibits a sensitivity of 99.0% (95% confidence interval [CI] 98.2-99.4%) and a specificity of 13.3% (95% CI, 12.6%-14.0%) for detecting clinically significant injuries. ⋯ Designed primarily to focus on detecting major injuries, the NEXUS Chest CT-Major DI consists of six criteria (abnormal CXR; distracting injury; chest wall tenderness; sternal tenderness; thoracic spine tenderness; and scapular tenderness) and exhibits higher specificity (37.9%; 95% CI 35.8-40.1%). Designed to reliability detect both major and minor injuries (sensitivity 95.4%; 95% CI 93.6-96.9%) with resulting lower specificity (25.5%; 95% CI 23.5-27.5%), the NEXUS CT-All rule consists of seven elements (the six NEXUS CT-Major criteria plus rapid deceleration mechanism). The purpose of this review is to synthesize the three DIs into a novel, cohesive summary algorithm with practical implementation recommendations to guide selective chest imaging in adult blunt trauma patients.
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Review Meta Analysis
Effect of simvastatin in patients with aneurysmal subarachnoid hemorrhage: A systematic review and meta-analysis.
Simvastatin might be beneficial to the patients with aneurysmal subarachnoid hemorrhage. However, the results remained controversial. We conducted a systematic review and meta-analysis to explore the efficacy of simvastatin for aneurysmal subarachnoid hemorrhage. ⋯ Compared to control intervention, simvastatin intervention was found to have no influence on delayed ischaemic deficit, delayed cerebral infarction, mRS≤2, vasospasm, ICU stay, hospital stay, and mortality in patients with acute aneurysmal subarachnoid hemorrhage.
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Multicenter Study Comparative Study Observational Study
Missed myocardial infarctions in ED patients prospectively categorized as low risk by established risk scores.
Few studies have prospectively compared multiple cardiac risk prediction scores. We compared the rate of missed acute myocardial infarction (AMI) in chest pain patients prospectively categorized as low risk by unstructured clinical impression, and by HEART, TIMI, GRACE, and EDACS scores, in combination with two negative contemporary cardiac troponins (cTn) available in the U.S. ⋯ Using their recommended cutpoints and non high sensitivity cTn, TIMI and unstructured clinical impression were the only scores with no missed cases of AMI. Using lower cutpoints (GRACE≤48, TIMI=0, EDACS≤11, HEART≤2) missed no case of AMI, but classified less patients as low-risk.
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Randomized Controlled Trial Comparative Study
Comparing the success rates of standard and modified Valsalva maneuvers to terminate PSVT: A randomized controlled trial.
The study aimed to detect whether modified Valsalva maneuver (VM) is more effective than the standard VM in terminating paroxysmal supraventricular tachycardia (PSVT). ⋯ This study suggests that modified VM therapy was more effective than standard VM for terminating PSVT. The modified VM therapy also indirectly reduced the need for anti-arrhythmic medication and indirectly caused fewer side effects.