Emergency medicine journal : EMJ
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On 4 July 2000, two workshops on handling emergencies in rural areas of Europe were held at the WONCA (World Organisation of National Colleges and Academies of Family Medicine/General Practice) conference in Vienna under the auspices of EURIPA (European Rural and Isolated Practitioners' Association). Papers submitted covered varying patterns of service provision and examples of short intensive training for emergencies at resident and general practitioner levels. ⋯ The workshops concluded that there was a need for more research in the application of emergency skills, that lack of confidence in dealing with emergencies may contribute to recruitment problems, and that further work towards a document detailing training requirements for emergencies was needed. This will be developed at a EURIPA workshop at WONCA in Tampere, June 2001.
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Ingestion of a foreign body, the commonest being a coin, is a common problem in children. In most cases the coin will pass uneventfully through the gastrointestinal tract. ⋯ This case is particularly important because the presenting symptom of wheezing led to the erroneous diagnosis of asthma, which resulted in a three month delay in investigation and treatment. In addition, it raises the issue of whether to perform chest radiography on newly diagnosed asthmatic patients to rule out the presence of a foreign body and thereby prevent serious complications.