Academic emergency medicine : official journal of the Society for Academic Emergency Medicine
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Periodic surveys of research directors (RDs) in emergency medicine (EM) are useful to assess the specialty's development and evolution of the RD role. ⋯ Research productivity of EM residency programs is associated with the presence of dedicated research faculty and staff and with reduced clinical demands for research faculty. Despite perceiving deficiencies in important resources, most RDs are professionally satisfied.
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Multicenter Study
CPR training and CPR performance: do CPR-trained bystanders perform CPR?
To determine factors associated with cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) provision by CPR-trained bystanders and to determine factors associated with CPR performance by trained bystanders. ⋯ A minority of CPR-trained bystanders performed CPR. CPR provision was more common in CPR-trained bystanders with more than a high-school education and when CPR training had been within five years. Previously espoused reasons for not doing CPR (mouth-to-mouth, infectious-disease risk) were not the reasons that bystanders cited for not doing CPR. Further work is needed to maximize CPR provision after CPR training.
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Randomized Controlled Trial
Laser-assisted anesthesia reduces the pain of venous cannulation in children and adults: a randomized controlled trial.
Application of topical anesthetics before intravenous (IV) cannulation is effective yet limited by delayed transdermal absorption. The authors evaluated a handheld laser device to enhance topical anesthetic absorption by ablating the stratum corneum, the major barrier to drug absorption through the skin. The hypothesis was that laser-assisted anesthesia would reduce the pain of IV cannulation in emergency department (ED) patients. ⋯ Pretreatment of the skin with a laser device followed by a five-minute topical lidocaine 4% application reduces the pain of IV cannulation in ED adult and pediatric patients.
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Randomized Controlled Trial
A randomized, controlled trial of sucrose analgesia in infants younger than 90 days of age who require bladder catheterization in the pediatric emergency department.
To determine whether an oral sucrose solution improves pain response for infants undergoing bladder catheterization in an emergency department (ED) population. ⋯ There was no overall treatment effect when using an oral sucrose solution before bladder catheterization in infants younger than 90 days of age. However, infants younger than or equal to 30 days of age who received sucrose had smaller increases in pain scores, less crying, and returned to baseline more rapidly than infants receiving placebo. Older infants did not show an improved pain response with oral sucrose.
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Older patients may visit the emergency department (ED) when their illness affects their function. ⋯ Functional decline is common in older ED patients and contributes to ED visits in older patients; its role in admission is unclear.