Academic emergency medicine : official journal of the Society for Academic Emergency Medicine
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Pneumonia hospitalization rates are frequently reported as a measure of pneumonia disease burden in the United States. However, a detailed understanding of pneumonia burden in all health care settings, including the emergency department (ED), is essential for measuring the full effect of this disease on the population and planning and evaluating interventions to reduce pneumonia-related morbidity. The aim of this study was to quantify pneumonia-attributable ED visits in the United States among children and adults during the 3-year period July 2006 through June 2009. ⋯ Pneumonia accounts for 2.2% of ED visits in the United States and results in approximately seven to eight ED visits per 1000 persons per year. A substantial proportion of pneumonia cases diagnosed in the ED are managed in treat-and-release ED outpatient visits, highlighting that enumeration of ED visit rates provides important complementary information to hospitalization rates for the assessment of pneumonia burden.
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Multicenter Study
Patient choice in the selection of hospitals by 9-1-1 emergency medical services providers in trauma systems.
Reasons for undertriage (transporting seriously injured patients to nontrauma centers) and the apparent lack of benefit of trauma centers among older adults remain unclear; understanding emergency medical services (EMS) provider reasons for selecting certain hospitals in trauma systems may provide insight to these issues. In this study, the authors evaluated reasons cited by EMS providers for selecting specific hospital destinations for injured patients, stratified by age, injury severity, field triage status, and prognosis. ⋯ Emergency medical services transport patterns among injured patients are not random, even after accounting for field triage protocols. The selection of hospitals appears to be heavily influenced by patient or family choice, which increases with patient age and involves inherent differences in patient prognosis.
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The objective was to evaluate the effectiveness of belt-positioning booster seats, compared with no restraint use and with seat belt use only, during motor vehicle crashes among U.S. children. ⋯ Children using belt-positioning booster seats appear to experience a higher risk of AIS > 0 injury to the neck and thorax than do children using seat belts only. Future research should examine whether the observed increase in neck and thorax injuries can be attributed to improper use of booster seats.
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Emergency physicians (EPs) frequently evaluate patients at risk for diseases that cause optic disc swelling, and they may encounter conditions that make traditional fundoscopy difficult or impossible. The objective was to assess whether EP-performed point-of-care (POC) ultrasound (US) could accurately assess swelling of the optic disc. ⋯ These data suggest that EP-performed POC US can detect clinically apparent optic disc swelling. Because sonography can be performed readily at the bedside, even in cases where fundoscopy is difficult or impossible, this technique may prove to be a valuable tool for the assessment of optic disc swelling in the emergency department (ED).