Articles: emergency-services.
-
Multicenter Study
Derivation of a clinical prediction score for the diagnosis of clinically significant symptomatic carotid artery disease.
Emergent vascular imaging identifies a subset of patients requiring immediate specialized care (i.e. carotid stenosis > 50%, dissection or free-floating thrombus). However, most TIA patients do not have these findings, so it is inefficient to image all TIA patients in crowded emergency departments (ED). Our objectives were to derive and internally validate a clinical prediction score for clinically significant carotid artery disease in TIA patients. ⋯ This simple score can predict carotid artery disease in TIA patients using readily available information. It identifies low-risk patients who can defer vascular imaging to an outpatient or specialty clinic setting. Medium-risk patients may undergo imaging immediately or with slight delay, depending on local resources. High-risk patients should undergo urgent vascular imaging.
-
Eur. J. Intern. Med. · Oct 2024
Multicenter StudyDiagnosis of acute aortic syndromes with ultrasound and d-dimer: the PROFUNDUS study.
In patients complaining common symptoms such as chest/abdominal/back pain or syncope, acute aortic syndromes (AAS) are rare underlying causes. AAS diagnosis requires urgent advanced aortic imaging (AAI), mostly computed tomography angiography. However, patient selection for AAI poses conflicting risks of misdiagnosis and overtesting. ⋯ Clinicaltrials.gov, NCT04430400.
-
Randomized Controlled Trial Multicenter Study Pragmatic Clinical Trial
Cost-Effectiveness of HIV Screening in Emergency Departments: Results From the Pragmatic Randomized HIV Testing Using Enhanced Screening Techniques in Emergency Departments Trial.
Identification of HIV remains a critical health priority for which emergency departments (EDs) are a central focus. The comparative cost-effectiveness of various HIV screening strategies in EDs remains largely unknown. The goal of this study was to compare programmatic costs and cost-effectiveness of nontargeted and 2 forms of targeted opt-out HIV screening in EDs using results from a multicenter, pragmatic randomized clinical trial. ⋯ Nontargeted HIV screening was more costly than targeted screening largely due to an increased number of HIV tests performed. Each HIV screening strategy had similar within-strategy costs per new HIV diagnosis with traditional targeted screening yielding the lowest cost per new diagnosis. For settings with budget constraints or very low HIV prevalences, the traditional targeted approach may be preferred; however, given only a slightly higher cost per new HIV diagnosis, ED settings looking to detect the most new cases may prefer nontargeted screening.
-
Pediatric emergency care · Sep 2024
Multicenter Study Observational StudySerial Trauma Abdominal Ultrasound in Children (STAUNCH): A Pilot Study.
Ultrasound has established utility within pediatric emergency medicine and has an added benefit of avoiding excessive radiation exposure. The serial focused assessment with sonography in trauma (sFAST) examination is a potential alternative to improve pediatric trauma evaluation. We sought to evaluate the accuracy of sFAST in pediatric patients with blunt abdominal trauma. ⋯ This pilot study found that sFAST can enhance blunt trauma evaluation and improve sensitivity and diagnostic accuracy. More data are needed to determine how sFAST can be utilized in pediatric patients with blunt abdominal trauma.
-
We assess the stability of a measure of emergency department (ED) admission intensity for value-based care programs designed to reduce variation in ED admission rates. Measure stability is important to accurately assess admission rates across sites and among physicians. ⋯ The measure exhibits stability in characterizing ED-level admission rates and reliably identifies high- and low-admitting physicians.