Academic emergency medicine : official journal of the Society for Academic Emergency Medicine
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Comparative Study
Comparing Emergency Department Patients to Inpatients Receiving a Pulmonary Embolism Response Team (PERT) Activation.
The development of pulmonary embolism response teams (PERTs) has been widely adopted nationally with the goal of providing multidisciplinary care to patients with high-risk PE. Most PERT activations originate from the emergency department (ED), while others are from the intensive care unit (ICU) or inpatient floors. It is unclear if ED PERT activations differ from non-ED PERT activation in terms of presentation, management, and outcome. ⋯ Pulmonary embolism response team activations from different clinical locations differ in terms of patient presentation, PE confirmation, treatments, and outcomes. PERTs should be customized to support the different needs of each clinical area.
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Multicenter Study
Embedded Clinical Decision Support in Electronic Health Record Decreases Use of High Cost Imaging in the Emergency Department: EmbED study.
The objective was to evaluate the impact of evidence-based clinical decision support tools integrated directly into provider workflow in the electronic health record on utilization of computed tomography (CT) brain, C-spine, and pulmonary embolism (PE). ⋯ Embedded clinical decision support is associated with decreased overall utilization of high-cost imaging, especially among higher utilizers. It also affected low utilizers, increasing their usage consistent with improved adherence to guidelines, but this effect did not offset the overall decreased utilization for CT brain or CT C-spine. Thus, integrating clinical decision support into the provider workflow promotes usage of validated tools across providers, which can standardize the delivery of care and improve compliance with evidence-based guidelines.
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The objective was to estimate D-dimer interval likelihood ratios (iLRs) for diagnosing pulmonary embolism (PE). ⋯ A decision strategy based on these approximate iLRs agrees with several published strategies.
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Multicenter Study
Individual and Neighborhood Characteristics of Children Seeking Emergency Department Care for Firearm Injuries Within the PECARN Network.
The objective was to describe the characteristics of children seeking emergency care for firearm injuries within the PECARN network and assess the influence of both individual and neighborhood factors on firearm-related injury risk. ⋯ Among children receiving ED treatment within the PECARN network, there are distinct demographic and neighborhood factors associated with firearm injuries. Among younger children (<10 years old), unintentional injuries predominate, while assault-type injuries were most common among older adolescents. Overall, among this PECARN patient population, male adolescents living in neighborhoods characterized by high levels of concentrated disadvantage had an elevated risk for firearm injury. Public health efforts should focus on developing and implementing initiatives addressing risk factors at both the individual and the community level, including ED-based interventions to reduce the risk for firearm injuries among high-risk pediatric populations.
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Observational Study
PREDICTing mortality in the emergency department: external validation and derivation of a clinical prediction tool.
The Choosing Wisely campaign has called for better engagement of palliative and hospice care services for patients in the emergency department (ED). PREDICT is a clinical prediction tool that was derived in an Australian ED cohort. It assesses a patient's risk of mortality at 1 year to select those who would benefit from advanced care planning. Such goals-of-care discussion can improve patients' ability to communicate what they want out of their healthcare and, in cases of end of life, potentially reduce the number of futile interventions. Using a cutoff of 13 points, PREDICT had a reported 95.3% specificity and 53.9% sensitivity for 1-year mortality. We externally validated PREDICT and derived a simpler modified PREDICT tool to systematically identify high-risk patients eligible for goals-of-care discussions and palliative care consultation in the ED. ⋯ PREDICT is an easy tool to administer to be able to identify patients who are at high risk of 1-year mortality and who could benefit from AHDs, goals-of-care discussion, and when appropriate in the context of an end-of-life setting, palliative medicine consultation. External validation of PREDICT was successful in our population. We simplified PREDICT and derived a new tool, the modified PREDICT minus ICU tool, without significantly altering the sensitivity, specificity, and AUC for death at 1 year. The next steps include external validation of the newly derived rule and prospective implementation.