Articles: emergency-services.
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Pediatric emergency care · Jun 2024
Observational StudyAccuracy of Pediatric Interventricular Septal Thickness Measurement Obtained Via Point-of-Care Ultrasound: A Prospective Study.
Hypertrophic cardiomyopathy is a genetic, life-threatening cardiovascular disease that often goes unidentified in pediatric patients. Patients are often asymptomatic and neither history or physical examination are reliable to detect the disease. The only reliable method to diagnose hypertrophic cardiomyopathy is with echocardiography to look at interventricular septal thickness. Emerging literature has shown that cardiac point-of-care ultrasound (POCUS) performed by pediatric emergency medicine (PEM) physicians is as effective and accurate compared with cardiac echocardiography performed by pediatric cardiologists. ⋯ Point-of-care ultrasound performed by ultrasound-trained PEM physicians to measure pediatric IVSd thickness has a high diagnostic accuracy with excellent agreement with a pediatric cardiologist.
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Pediatric emergency care · Jun 2024
Computer Simulation to Assess Emergency Department Length of Stay in Pediatric Traumatic Brain Injury.
Our study aimed to identify how emergency department (ED) arrival rate, process of care, and physical layout can impact ED length of stay (LOS) in pediatric traumatic brain injury care. ⋯ Exceeding certain threshold ED arrival rates of children with traumatic brain injury can substantially increase pediatric trauma center ED LOS but modifications to ED processes and bed location may mitigate this increase.
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Pediatric emergency care · Jun 2024
Thrombocytopenia and Adverse Bleeding Events in Neonatal Lumbar Punctures in the Emergency Department.
Lumbar punctures are performed as part of a routine evaluation of neonates with fever in the emergency department. Current recommendations regarding performing a lumbar puncture in the presence of thrombocytopenia exist for children with leukemia and other cancers; however, there are no such recommendations for the general neonatal population. This study assesses the frequency of thrombocytopenia and adverse bleeding events in neonates who undergo a lumbar puncture to determine whether a complete blood count, and specifically the platelet count, should be reviewed before performing the lumbar puncture. ⋯ Our results demonstrated a very low risk of bleeding events associated with lumbar punctures in neonates, with no increased risk in the thrombocytopenic group. As such, we conclude that waiting for the results of a complete blood count before performing the lumbar puncture in neonates without a known bleeding disorder is unnecessary.
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When advance care plans are not communicated or goals are in conflict, significant family and clinician distress may result. The distress is especially high when potentially nongoal concordant care is expected by surrogates in the emergency department (ED). To demonstrate the effect of off-hour, phone consultations by palliative care clinicians in reducing the family and clinician distress when nongoal concordant care is expected in the ED. A partnership between palliative care and emergency medicine can decrease the burden of decision making and provide opportunities for modeling a goals-of-care discussion by experts in this important procedure.