The goal of therapy for bradycardia or tachycardia is to rapidly identify and treat patients who are hemodynamically unstable or symptomatic due to the arrhythmia. Drugs or, when appropriate, pacing may be used to control unstable or symptomatic bradycardia. Cardioversion or drugs or both may be used to control unstable or symptomatic tachycardia. ACLS providers should closely monitor stable patients pending expert consultation and should be prepared to aggressively treat those with evidence of decompensation.

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Part 8: Adult Advanced Cardiovascular Life Support 2010 American Heart Association Guidelines for Cardiopulmonary Resuscitation and Emergency Cardiovascular Care

This section of the 2010 AHA Guidelines for CPR and ECC addresses cardiac arrest in situations that require special treatments or procedures beyond those provided during basic life support (BLS) and advanced cardiovascular life support (ACLS). We have included 15 specific cardiac arrest situations. The first several sections discuss cardiac arrest associated with internal physiological or metabolic conditions, such as asthma (12.1), anaphylaxis (12.2), pregnancy (12.3), morbid obesity (12.4), pulmonary embolism (PE) (12.5), and electrolyte imbalance (12.6).

The next several sections relate to resuscitation and treatment of cardiac arrest associated with external or environmentally related circumstances, such as ingestion of toxic substances (12.7), trauma (12.8), accidental hypothermia (12.9), avalanche (12.10), drowning (12.11), and electric shock/lightning strikes (12.12).

The last 3 sections review management of cardiac arrest that may occur during special situations affecting the heart, including percutaneous coronary intervention (PCI) (12.13), cardiac tamponade (12.14), and cardiac surgery (12.15).

Asthma is responsible for more than 2 million visits to the emergency department (ED) in the United States each year, with 1 in 4 patients requiring admission to a hospital.1 Annually there are 5,000 to 6,000 asthma-related deaths in the United States, many occurring in the prehospital setting.2 Severe asthma accounts for approximately 2% to 20% of admissions to intensive care units, with up to one third of these patients requiring intubation and mechanical ventilation.3 This section focuses on the evaluation and treatment of patients with near-fatal asthma.

Several consensus groups have developed excellent guidelines for the management of asthma that are available on the World Wide Web: 

### Pathophysiology

The pathophysiology of asthma consists of 3 key abnormalities: 

Complications of severe asthma, such as tension pneumothorax, lobar atelectasis, pneumonia, and pulmonary edema, can contribute to fatalities. Severe asthma exacerbations are commonly associated with …

http://www.kardio.hu/feltoltott/dokumentumok/fajl_201148105352Cardiopulm_resuscit_Pt12_Cardiac_arrest.pdf

Part 12: Cardiac Arrest in Special Situations 2010 American Heart Association Guidelines for Cardiopulmonary Resuscitation and Emergency Cardiovascular Care

Organisms have sophisticated subcellular compartments containing enzymes that function in tandem These confined compartments ensure effective chemical transformation and transport of molecules, and the elimination of toxic metabolic wastes Creating functional enzyme complexes that are confined in a similar way remains challenging Here we show that two or more enzymes with complementary functions can be assembled and encapsulated within a thin polymer shell to form enzyme nanocomplexes These nanocomplexes exhibit improved catalytic efficiency and enhanced stability when compared with free enzymes Furthermore, the co-localized enzymes display complementary functions, whereby toxic intermediates generated by one enzyme can be promptly eliminated by another enzyme We show that nanocomplexes containing alcohol oxidase and catalase could reduce blood alcohol levels in intoxicated mice, offering an alternative antidote and prophylactic for alcohol intoxication

Biomimetic enzyme nanocomplexes and their use as antidotes and preventive measures for alcohol intoxication

It seems implausible that an injection of a simple, off-the-shelf, intravenous nutritional solution could be acutely life-saving for a patient with severe drug overdose. Yet, dozens of published case reports support this observation, first made more than a decade ago in a rodent model of bupivacaine toxicity. It is even more surprising that such a simple formulation can rapidly reverse severe clinical toxicity from a variety of vastly disparate medications with distinct pharmacodynamics and mechanisms of action. This review will focus on the clinical application of lipid emulsion therapy in resuscitation from drug-related toxicity and provide an introduction to the development of the method, guidelines for its use and insights into potential controversies and future applications.

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Lipid emulsion infusion: resuscitation for local anesthetic and other drug overdose.

This Part of the 2015 American Heart Association (AHA) Guidelines Update for Cardiopulmonary Resuscitation (CPR) and Emergency Cardiovascular Care (ECC) addresses cardiac arrest in situations that require special treatments or procedures other than those provided during basic life support (BLS) and advanced cardiovascular life support (ACLS).

This Part summarizes recommendations for the management of resuscitation in several critical situations, including cardiac arrest associated with pregnancy (Part 10.1), pulmonary embolism (PE) (10.2), and opioid-associated resuscitative emergencies, with or without cardiac arrest (10.3). Part 10.4 provides recommendations on intravenous lipid emulsion (ILE) therapy, an emerging therapy for cardiac arrest due to drug intoxication. Finally, updated guidance for the management of cardiac arrest during percutaneous coronary intervention (PCI) is presented in Part 10.5. A table of all recommendations made in this 2015 Guidelines Update as well as those made in the 2010 Guidelines is contained in the Appendix.

The special situations of resuscitation section (Part 12) of the 2010 AHA Guidelines for CPR and ECC 1 covered 15 distinct topic areas. The following topics were last updated in 2010:

Additional information about drowning is presented in Part 5 of this publication, “Adult Basic Life Support and Cardiopulmonary Resuscitation Quality.”

The recommendations in this 2015 Guidelines Update are based on an extensive evidence review process that was begun by the International Liaison Committee on Resuscitation (ILCOR) with the publication of the ILCOR 2010 International Consensus on CPR and ECC Science With Treatment …

Part 10: Special Circumstances of Resuscitation: 2015 American Heart Association Guidelines Update for Cardiopulmonary Resuscitation and Emergency Cardiovascular Care

Objective. To assess the evidence regarding the efficacy and safety of intravenous fat emulsion (IFE) in the management of poisoned patients. Methods. We performed a systematic review of the literature with no time or language restriction. The electronic databases were searched from their inception until June 1, 2009 (Medline, EMBASE, ISI web of science, Biological abstract, LILACS, ChemIndex, Toxnet, and Proquest). We also examined the references of identified articles and the gray literature. The target interventions eligible for inclusion were administration of any IFE before, during, or after poisoning in human or animals. All types of studies were reviewed. Eligibility for inclusion and study quality scores, based on criteria by Jadad and the STROBE statement, were evaluated by independent investigators. The primary outcome was mortality. Secondary outcomes included neurologic, hemodynamic, and electrocardiographic variables, as well as adverse effects. Results. Of the 938 publications identified by ...

Lipid emulsions in the treatment of acute poisoning: a systematic review of human and animal studies

Background Age-related differences in pain perception have been demonstrated in experimental settings but have been investigated scarcely and without valid scale in the clinical framework. Objectives To examine the effect of age on pain perception for recognized painful diagnoses encountered in the emergency department (ED). Methods A post-hoc analysis of real-time archived data was performed in a tertiary urban and a secondary regional ED. We included all consecutive adult patients (≥18 years) with the following diagnosis at discharge: renal colic, pancreatitis, appendicitis, headache/migraine, dislocation and extremities fractures, and a pain evaluation of ≥1 (0−10, verbal numerical scale) at triage. The primary outcome was to compare for each of these diagnoses the level of pain intensity between four age groups (18−44; 45−64; 65−74; 75+ years). Results A total of 15,670 patients (48% women) were triaged with a mean pain intensity of 7.7 (SD=2.0). Women exhibited greater pain scores than men for pancreatitis, headache/migraine, and extremity fracture. Renal colic, pancreatitis, appendicitis, and headache/migraine showed a linear decrease in pain scores with age whereas dislocation and extremity fractures did not present age differences. Mean differences in pain intensity scores between young adults (18−44 years) and patients aged ≥75 years were 0.79 (95% confidence interval [95% CI] 0.5−1.1) for renal colic, 1.1 (95% CI 0.7−1.4) for pancreatitis, 0.70 (95% CI 0.2−1.2) for appendicitis, and 0.86 (95% CI 0.6−1.1) for headache/migraine. Conclusion Older patients perceive similar pain for dislocation and extremity fractures and less for visceral and headache/migraine pain; however, these age differences may not be clinically important.

Impact of Age on Pain Perception for Typical Painful Diagnoses in the Emergency Department.

Study objective Delayed pain treatment is a common problem in emergency departments (EDs). The objective of this study was to examine the effect of age on time to ED patients receiving the first analgesic dose for moderate to severe pain. Methods Real-time, archived data from a tertiary urban hospital and a secondary regional hospital were analyzed post hoc. We included all consecutive adult ED patients (≥ 18 years) on stretchers whose pain intensity was at least 4 (0-10, verbal numerical scale) at triage between March 2008 and December 2012. The primary outcome was time from the beginning of triage to analgesic medication in seniors (≥ 65 years) compared with younger patients. Results A total of 34,213 patients (56% women) were triaged to an ED bed with mean pain intensity of 7.6 (SD ± 1.8). Analgesics were administered to 20,486 patients (59.9%) in a median time of 2.3 hours (interquartile range [IQR] = 3.6). Median time for seniors to receive analgesics was 3.2 hours (IQR = 5.1) compared with 2.1 hours (IQR = 3.1, effect size = 0.19) for younger patients. This represents a 55.2% increase in time to analgesic for seniors. Seniors waited 12 minutes longer to be evaluated by a physician, 20 minutes longer for analgesic prescription, and 35 minutes longer for medication administration. After controlling for confounding factors, they still waited longer to receive pain medication (hazards ratio = 1.37; 95% confidence interval, 1.32-1.42) than younger patients. Conclusion Seniors with moderate to severe pain wait 1.1 hours (55.2%) longer than younger patients to receive analgesics. Physicians and nurses (32 and 35 minutes, respectively) contributed to this disparity.

Senior patients with moderate to severe pain wait longer for analgesic medication in EDs

Objectives: This study aimed to ascertain the association between self-reported pain intensity and vital signs in both emergency department (ED) patients and a subgroup of patients with diagnosed conditions known to produce significant pain. Methods: We performed a retrospective analysis of real-time, archived data from an electronic medical record system at an urban teaching hospital and regional community hospital. We included consecutive ED patients ≥16 years old who had a self-reported pain intensity ≥1 as measured during triage, from March 2005 to December 2012. The primary outcome was vital signs for self-reported pain intensity levels (mild, moderate, severe) on an 11-point verbal numerical scale. Changes in pain intensity levels were also compared to variations in vital signs. Both analyses were repeated on a subgroup of patients with diagnosed conditions recognized to produce significant pain: fracture, dislocation, or renal colic. Results: We included 153,567 patients (mean age of 48.4±19.3 years; 55.5% women) triaged with pain (median intensity of 7/10±3). Of these, 8.9% of patients had diagnosed conditions recognized to produce significant pain. From the total sample, the difference between mild and severe pain categories was 2.7 beats/minutes (95% CI: 2.4�3.0) for heart rate and 0.13 mm Hg (95% CI: -0.26�0.52) for systolic blood pressure. These differences generated small effect sizes and were not clinically significant. Results were similar for patients who experienced changes in pain categories and for those conditions recognized to produce significant pain. Conclusion: Health care professionals cannot use vital signs to estimate or substantiate self-reported pain intensity levels or changes over time.

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Karine Sanogo

Papers

Lipid emulsions in the treatment of acute poisoning: a systematic review of human and animal studies

Impact of Age on Pain Perception for Typical Painful Diagnoses in the Emergency Department.

Senior patients with moderate to severe pain wait longer for analgesic medication in EDs

Vital Signs Are Not Associated with Self-Reported Acute Pain Intensity in the Emergency Department.