The American journal of emergency medicine
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Lower gastrointestinal bleeding (LGIB) is a condition commonly seen in the emergency department. Therefore, it is important for emergency medicine clinicians to be aware of the current evidence regarding the diagnosis and management of this disease. ⋯ An understanding of literature updates can improve the care of patients with LGIB.
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Trauma accounts for nearly half of all deaths of pregnant women. Pregnant women have distinct physiologic and anatomic characteristics which complicate their management following major trauma. ⋯ Trauma is a common cause of morbidity and mortality in pregnant women. Emergency clinicians must understand the evaluation and management of pregnant trauma patients.
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Artificial intelligence (AI) in healthcare is the ability of a computer to perform tasks typically associated with clinical care (e.g. medical decision-making and documentation). AI will soon be integrated into an increasing number of healthcare applications, including elements of emergency department (ED) care. Here, we describe the basics of AI, various categories of its functions (including machine learning and natural language processing) and review emerging and potential future use-cases for emergency care. ⋯ AI could also help provide focused summaries of charts, summarize encounters for hand-offs, and create discharge instructions with an appropriate language and reading level. Additional use cases include medical decision making for decision rules, real-time models that predict clinical deterioration or sepsis, and efficient extraction of unstructured data for coding, billing, research, and quality initiatives. We discuss the potential transformative benefits of AI, as well as the concerns regarding its use (e.g. privacy, data accuracy, and the potential for changing the doctor-patient relationship).
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Review
High risk and low prevalence diseases: Stevens Johnson syndrome and toxic epidermal necrolysis.
Stevens Johnson syndrome (SJS) and toxic epidermal necrolysis (TEN) are serious conditions that carry a high rate of morbidity and mortality. ⋯ An understanding of SJS/TEN can assist emergency clinicians in diagnosing and managing this potentially deadly disease.
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The number of critically ill patients that present to emergency departments across the world has risen steadily for nearly two decades. Despite a decrease in initial emergency department (ED) volumes early in the COVID-19 pandemic, the proportion of critically ill patients is now higher than pre-pandemic levels [1]. The emergency physician (EP) is often the first physician to evaluate and resuscitate a critically ill patient. ⋯ This review summarizes important articles published in 2022 that pertain to the resuscitation and management of select critically ill ED patients. These articles have been selected based on the authors review of key critical care, resuscitation, emergency medicine, and medicine journals and their opinion of the importance of study findings as it pertains to the care of the critically ill ED patient. Topics covered in this article include cardiac arrest, post-cardiac arrest care, rapid sequence intubation, mechanical ventilation, fluid resuscitation, and sepsis.