Emergency medicine journal : EMJ
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Comparative Study
Knowledge of radiation exposure in common radiological investigations: a comparison between radiologists and non-radiologists.
Radiological examinations are commonly requested for patients to aid clinical diagnosis. However, many doctors do not realise how much radiation dosage their patients are exposed to during radiological investigations. This study aims to assess and compare the knowledge of radiologists and non-radiologists about radiation doses of common radiological investigations. ⋯ Knowledge of radiation doses of investigation is generally inadequate among radiologists, and particularly poor in non-radiologists. Underestimation of radiation doses may expose patients to increasing radiological investigation and exposure to radiation hazards. Awareness of the radiation hazard of radiological examinations should be raised among medical professionals.
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Randomized Controlled Trial
Achy breaky makey wakey heart? A randomised crossover trial of musical prompts.
Compared with no music (NM), does listening to 'Achy breaky heart' (ABH) or 'Disco science' (DS) increase the proportion of prehospital professionals delivering chest compressions at 2010 guideline-compliant rates of 100-120 bpm and 50-60 mm depths? ⋯ Listening to DS significantly increased the proportion of prehospital professionals compressing at 2010 guideline-compliant rates. Regardless of intervention more than half gave compressions that were too shallow. Alternative audible feedback mechanisms may be more effective.
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This retrospective, electronic patient care record review examined a consecutive sample of patients presenting with pain to the metropolitan region of Ambulance Victoria over a 12 month period in 2008. Seven factors were found to be associated with the likelihood of clinically important pain reduction following multivariate analyses. These included age, time criticality of the patient, pain aetiology, initial pain severity, analgesic agent or combination administered to the patient and prehospital time.
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The tendency of sepsis to progress rapidly and the benefit of an early start of treatment emphasise the importance of fast risk stratification in the emergency department (ED). The aim of the present work was to validate the Mortality in Emergency Department Sepsis (MEDS) score as a predictor of 28-day mortality in ED patients with sepsis in The Netherlands, and to compare its performance to C reactive protein (CRP) and lactate. ⋯ The MEDS score is an adequate tool for predicting mortality in patients with sepsis in a Dutch internistic ED population. CRP is less useful in this context. Lactate appears to be at least a fair predictor of mortality, but needs to be investigated more systematically in a larger population.
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Seizure-related visits are common in the emergency department (ED) but the clinical situations for ordering emergency electroencephalography (EEG) are unclear. The aim of this study is to identify which clinical conditions meet with the pathological EEG and whether patient management is changed by abnormal results. ⋯ EEG provides useful diagnostic information and should be considered in all patients presenting to the ED with a seizure. Since the timing of the study affects the diagnostic efficacy of the test, EEG recordings might be done within 24 h either in the ED or epilepsy clinic.