Can J Emerg Med
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Over the past few decades, point-of-care ultrasound (PoCUS) has come to play a major role in the practice of emergency medicine. Despite its numerous benefits, there has been a slow uptake of PoCUS use in rural emergency departments. ⋯ Potential solutions include expanding residency training in ultrasound skills, extending funding for PoCUS training to rural physicians in practice, moving PoCUS training courses to rural sites, and creating telesonography training for rural physicians. With these barriers identified and solutions proposed, corrective measures must be taken so that the benefits of PoCUS are extended to patients in rural Canada where, arguably, it has the greatest potential for benefit when access to advanced imaging is not readily available.
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Review Meta Analysis
SGEM Hot Off the Press: hypertonic saline in severe traumatic brain injury: a systematic review and meta-analysis of randomized controlled trials.
As part of the Canadian Journal of Emergency Medicine's (CJEM) developing social media strategy, 1 we are collaborating with the Skeptics' Guide to Emergency Medicine (SGEM) to summarize and critically appraise the current emergency medicine (EM) literature using evidence-based medicine principles. In the "Hot Off the Press" series, we select original research manuscripts published in CJEM to be featured on the SGEM website/podcast and discussed by the study authors and the online EM community. ⋯ Through this series, we hope to enhance the value, accessibility, and application of important, clinically relevant EM research. In this, the second SGEM HOP hosted collaboratively with CJEM, we discuss a systematic review evaluating the use of hypertonic saline in the treatment of severe traumatic brain injury. 2.
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Wernicke's encephalopathy (WE) is a serious neurologic condition resulting from thiamine deficiency. The majority of cases involve alcoholism; however, nonalcohol-associated WE does occur and is under-recognized. We discuss a case of a 22-year-old man with a history of Crohn's disease who presented to our emergency department with multiple neurologic complaints related to WE.