Emergency medicine journal : EMJ
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COVID-19 presented unique challenges in preparing our stand-alone children's emergency department for the pandemic and has demonstrated well the paediatric adage, 'children aren't little adults'.
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Major trauma is the third leading cause of avoidable mortality in the UK. Defining which patients require care in a major trauma centre is a critical component of developing, evaluating and enhancing regional major trauma systems. Traditionally, trauma patients have been classified using the Injury Severity Score (ISS), but resource-based criteria have been proposed as an alternative. The aim of this study was to investigate the relationship between ISS and the use of life-saving interventions (LSI). ⋯ A clinically significant number of adult trauma patients requiring LSIs have an ISS below the traditional definition of major trauma. The traditional definition should be reconsidered and either lowered, or an alternative metric should be used.
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A short-cut review of the available medical literature was carried out to establish whether remdesivir was an effective treatment for patients with confirmed COVID-19 infection. After abstract review, five papers were found to answer this clinical question using the detailed search strategy. The author, date and country of publication, patient group studied, study type, relevant outcomes, results and study weaknesses of these papers are tabulated. It is concluded that despite some recent promising studies, further well-designed and larger trials are needed to answer this specific question.