The American journal of emergency medicine
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Geriatric Emergency Medicine is an important frontier for study and innovation by emergency practitioners. The rapid growth of this patient population combined with complex medical and social needs has prompted research ranging from which tests and screening tools are most effective for geriatric evaluation to how we can safely manage pain in the elderly or address goals of care in the Emergency Department. This review summarizes emergency medicine articles focused on the older patient population published in 2019, which the authors consider critical to the practice of geriatric emergency medicine.
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Comparative Study
Effect of opioid analgesics on emergency department length of stay among low back pain patients in the United States.
The objective of this study was to compare emergency department (ED) length of stay (LOS) between patients treated with opioid analgesia versus non-opioid analgesia for low back pain (LBP) in the ED. ⋯ In a nationally representative sample of patient visits to ED due to LBP in the US, use of opioids in the ED was associated with an increased ED LOS.
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Case Reports
Hypoglycemic cardiac arrest and rapid return-of-spontaneous circulation (ROSC) with dextrose - A case report.
Hypoglycemia was part of the "H's and T's" in the 2005 American Heart Association ACLS guidelines for reversible causes of cardiac arrest but was removed in subsequent editions. We present a case of return of spontaneous circulation in a patient with cardiac arrest after administration of dextrose for hypoglycemia. Routine administration of dextrose to patients in cardiac arrest has been shown to be associated with increased mortality and worse neurological outcomes. However, this case reminds the clinician to consider hypoglycemia in patients with cardiac arrest, and to attempt correcting a low blood glucose if noted.
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Observational Study
Prognostic utilization of models based on the APACHE II, APACHE IV, and SAPS II scores for predicting in-hospital mortality in emergency department.
This study was designed to evaluate and compare the prognostic value of the APACHE II, APACHE IV, and SAPSII scores for predicting in-hospital mortality in the ED on a large sample of patients. Earlier studies in the ED setting have either used a small sample or focused on specific diagnoses. ⋯ APACHEIV outperformed APACHEII and SAPSII in terms of discrimination and calibration. More validation is needed for using these models for decision-making about individual patients, although they would perform best at a cohort level.
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Case Reports
Critical pancreatitis management associated with hypertriglyceridemia in pregnancy in emergency service.
Because of the variable clinical features of acute pancreatitis, it is difficult to make a differential diagnosis in patients presenting with abdominal pain in emergency departments. Acute pancreatitis due to severe hypertriglyceridemia during pregnancy is rare but due to the increased risk of maternal and fetal mortality, diagnosis and treatment options should be known and should be performed in the emergency department, which is the first admission site. In this case report, we present a 20-year-old woman with 19 weeks pregnant who presented to the emergency department with abdominal pain and whose biochemistry parameters were high enough to give lipemic stimulation was hospitalized in the emergency ıntensıve care unit (EICU) in the emergency department and lipid apheresis treatment was planned successfully. Lipid apheresis treatment in patients with resistant hypertriglyceridemia in the emergency department should become an easy, safe and effective option with the use of an emergency intensive care unit.