J Emerg Med
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Assessment of patients with chest pain is a regular challenge in the emergency department (ED). Recent guidelines recommended quantitative assessment of ischemic risk by means of risk scores. ⋯ Without clinical gestalt, the modified HEART score had the best discriminative capacity in predicting 30-day MACE.
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Sternoclavicular joint infection (SJI), to include septic arthritis (SA), is a rare cause of chest pain and is often found in patients with significant risk factors and sources for SA. Most acute care laboratory results lack significant sensitivity to rule out SA. Radiographic findings in common acute care imaging often does not reveal findings of SA and osteomyelitis in the acute phase of the infection. ⋯ We present a patient without significant risk factors for SA, who initially presented with 3 days of pain to the left chest, left neck and shoulder. He had fever and was treated with a short course of antibiotics for possible pneumonia. His symptoms recurred along with fever 36 days after the initial onset of symptoms and was then diagnosed radiographically with left-sided SJI. WHY SHOULD AN EMERGENCY PHYSICIAN BE AWARE OF THIS?: This case reinforces the need to maintain a broad differential diagnosis in the evaluation for chest pain and pursue advanced imaging, such as magnetic resonance imaging, when the pretest probability of SJI is high, especially in the acute phase of the infection.
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The original methodology of the PAWPER (Pediatric Advanced Weight Prediction in the Emergency Room) tape relies on a gestalt visual assessment of a child's body habitus to adjust a length-based weight estimation. This assessment is dependent on the user's subjective opinion, which may result in aberrations in accuracy between users and populations. With the development of the second-generation PAWPER XL tape, a more objective method of habitus evaluation was desired. ⋯ The figural reference image system was objectively much more accurate than, and subjectively preferable to, the original gestalt visual estimation methodology.