Articles: emergency-services.
-
Tidsskr. Nor. Laegeforen. · Mar 1995
[Medical emergency service. Descriptions of a one-year activity at an emergency communication center].
The emergency medical communication centre, Vestfold Central Hospital, receives emergency medical calls (phone 113), from 200,000 citizens in Vestfold county. Calls are categorised by urgency (red, yellow or green) according to the Norwegian Index to Emergency Medical Assistance, a criteria-based dispatch manual. In 1993, 2,440 red (suspected life-threatening conditions), 3,502 yellow and 6,505 green calls were received. ⋯ Efforts were made 628 times to give basic life support instruction by telephone. An ambulance was the most frequent response, general medical practitioners were called upon relatively seldom. The response was estimated to adequate in 79% of the incidents, exaggerated in 9% and inadequate in 3%.
-
Clinical Trial
Failure of information as an intervention to modify clinical management. A time-series trial in patients with acute chest pain.
To test whether a low-intensity, nonintrusive intervention improved the efficiency of management of patients with acute chest pain. ⋯ The use of information alone--without direct human contact--did not affect management of patients with acute chest pain at this hospital. Although this low-intensity intervention might be more effective for other conditions and in other settings, our data support the use of other strategies to affect physician decision making.
-
The metropolitan area of Mexico City, Mexico, has serious air pollution problems. Although air contaminants may contribute to clinical asthma, there are at present no data on the relation between air pollution exposure and childhood asthma in Mexico City. The authors reviewed data on emergency visits from January to June 1990 at one major pediatric hospital in Mexico City. ⋯ After adjustment for potential confounding factors, the multivariate regression model predicted that an increase of 50 ppb in the 1-hour maximum ozone level would lead to a 43% increase in the number of emergency visits for asthma on the following day. Exposure to high ozone levels (> 110 ppb) for 2 consecutive days increased the number of asthma-related emergency visits by 68 percent. The results of this study suggest that ozone exposure is positively associated with the number of children's emergency visits for asthma in Mexico City.