The American journal of emergency medicine
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Cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) guidelines have been updated every 5 years since 2000. Significant changes have been made in each update, and every time a guideline is changed, the instructors of each country that ratify the American Heart Association (AHA) must review the contents of the revised guideline to understand the changes made in the concept of CPR. The purpose of this study was to use a computerized data mining method to identify and characterize the changes in the key concepts of the AHA-Basic Life Support (BLS) updates between 2000 and 2015. ⋯ Analysis revealed that keywords related to CPR and AED associated with the co-occurrence network continued to appear. We believe that the results of this study will ultimately contribute to optimizing AHA's educational strategies for health care providers.
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To describe differences in funded grants between male and female faculty in two academic emergency departments. ⋯ In this multicenter analysis, gender discrepancies exist among funded grants of EM faculty. Male recipients had higher academic ranking than their female counterparts. Female recipients were less likely to have government, institutional, and industry grants but received a greater percent effort on funding that was awarded.
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Case Reports
Weakness and elevated creatinine kinase as the initial presentation of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19).
COVID-19 is a global public health emergency with more than one million positive cases across the globe. COVID-19 has a multifaceted presentation. We are herein to report two cases of SARS-CoV-2 induced rhabdomyolysis with an initial presentation of weakness and elevated creatinine kinase (CK). ⋯ Routine chest X-ray showed bilateral infiltrates in both cases and subsequently reverse-transcription polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) for SARS-CoV-2 was positive. To the best of our knowledge, there was only one literature to date documented SARS-CoV-2 induced rhabdomyolysis as a late complication of COVID-19 patient. Our cases showed that elevated CK and rhabdomyolysis can be the sole initial presentation of patients with COVID-19 and total CK should be ordered in every patient on admission.
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A patient presented to the emergency department with altered mental status and lower extremity weakness in the setting of nitrous oxide inhalant abuse and Coronavirus Disease-2019 (COVID-19) infection. He subsequently developed hypotension and severe hypoxia, found to have a saddle pulmonary embolus (PE) with right heart strain requiring alteplase (tPA).
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Comparative Study Observational Study
Comparison of non-invasive CPAP with mask use in carbon monoxide poisoning.
Carbon monoxide (CO) is one of the major causes of poisoning worldwide. We aimed to investigate the efficacy of the continuous positive airway pressure (CPAP) use in CO poisoning. ⋯ CPAP lowered the amount of CO in the blood faster than the mask; therefore, it may be effective in the treatment of CO poisoning.