Showing papers in "Annals of Emergency Medicine in 1995"

TL;DR: The Heart ER program provides an effective method for evaluating low- to moderate-risk patients with possible acute ischemic coronary syndrome in the ED setting.

TL;DR: DNS after CO poisoning cannot be predicted on the basis of a patient's clinical history or CO level, and HBO treatment decreased the incidence of DNS.

TL;DR: Because CPR providers could not recognize their inability to provide proper compressions, cardiac arrest team leaders should carefully monitor compression adequacy during CPR to assure maximally effective care for patients receiving CPR.

TL;DR: A wound registry data collection instrument that takes less than 1 minute to complete and enables the collection of most wound management techniques used by emergency physicians was found to have substantial interobserver concordance for wound description, infection, and cosmetic appearance.

TL;DR: Ventricular fibrillation is not rare in child and adolescent prehospital cardiac arrest, and these patients have a better outcome than those with asystole or pulseless electrical activity, and earlier recognition and treatment of ventricularfibrillation might improve pediatric cardiac arrest survival rates.

TL;DR: The Hawthorne effect must be considered in the design of prehospital studies and interpretation of data collected by paramedics, and it may require a perceived demand for performance.

TL;DR: Most successfully resuscitated pediatric arrest victims are resuscitated in the prehospital setting and do not suffer severe neurologic injury, but most patients who present to the ED in continued arrest and survive to discharge have severe Neurologic injury.

TL;DR: i.v. prochlorperazine relieves the headache and tends to improve nausea better than metoclopramide in ED patients with acute migraine headache.

TL;DR: A practical, highly sensitive, and reliable decision rule for the use of radiography in acute knee injuries has been derived and clinical application should await prospective validation of the rule.

TL;DR: Overall comprehension rates in this population were good despite the fact that ED instruction sheets were written at an inappropriately high reading level, and verbal instructions given by the discharging physician likely have a significant effect on patients' comprehension.

TL;DR: Abnormalities on CT scans in patients with mild head trauma are fairly common, although the need for neurosurgical intervention is rare, and clinical decision rules can be used to identify those patients with more serious intracranial pathology.

TL;DR: The addition of illustrations to discharge instructions for patients who have sustained lacerations improves patient comprehension, and there is a large effect among patients who are nonwhite, female, or have no more than a high school education.

TL;DR: A subset of patients with nonemergency problems can be prospectively identified by triage nurses and triaged out of the emergency department without significant adverse outcomes provided there is community support for follow-up care.

TL;DR: Maximal benefit from thrombolytic therapy is not realized in a substantial proportion of patients with AMI because of delays in seeking medical care, and knowledge of the reasons patients delay or do not call 911 can help focus efforts on achieving more rapid treatment of patientswith AMI.

TL;DR: Patients who receive BCPR are more often found in VT/VF and have an increased rate of live discharge, with controls for age and response and definitive care intervals.

TL;DR: Older adults with alterations in mental status, particularly alterations in consciousness and delirium, are at high risk for admission to an inpatient unit and institutionalization after discharge and standardized mental status testing identified high-risk older adults in the ED.

TL;DR: It is suggested that immobilization on rigid spine boards is painful and may produce tissue-interface pressure high enough to result in the development of pressure necrosis ("bedsores") and emergency care providers should consider the use of interposed air mattresses to reduce the pain and potential tissue injury associated with immobilization.

TL;DR: The results confirm that stethoscopes used in emergency practice are often contaminated with staphylococci and are therefore a potential vector of infection, which is greatly reduced by frequent cleaning with alcohol or nonionic detergent.

TL;DR: BLS defibrillation can reduce the relative risk of death for out-of-hospital cardiac arrest victims in ventricular fibrillation, and weaknesses in individual study designs and regional clustering limit the strength of this metaanalysis.

TL;DR: Cherpitel et al. as discussed by the authors evaluated the sensitivity and specificity of several alcohol screening instruments (CAGE, brief MAST, AUDIT, TWEAK, History of Trauma Scale) and other measures (breath alcohol analyzer reading and reporting of drinking before the event), in an emergency department population, against International Classification of Disease, revision 10 (ICD-10) criteria for harmful drinking and for alcohol dependence from the Composite International Diagnostic Interview (CIDI) by gender, race, and injury status.

TL;DR: Female patients with headache, neck pain, or back pain describe more pain and are perceived by providers to have more pain than male patients in the ED, and female patients receive more medications and stronger analgesics.

TL;DR: Nebulized dexamethasone was as effective as oral prednisone in the ED treatment of moderately ill children with acute asthma and was associated with more rapid clinical improvement, more reliable drug delivery, and fewer relapses.

TL;DR: In this population of asthmatic patients, response to initial ED management of bronchospasm, as measured by PEFR, was better with aerosols delivered by BiPAP than with those delivered by SVN.

TL;DR: In this experimental model of bystander CPR, the authors could not detect a difference in hemodynamics, 48-hour survival, or neurologic outcome when CPR was applied with and without ventilatory support.

TL;DR: The infrared emission detection ear thermometer is an accurate means of assessing normal body temperature without using corrective offsets to estimate temperature at other body sites and may represent appropriate cutoffs for fever screening using this device.

TL;DR: RaVR and R/SaVR were greater in patients in whom seizures or arrhythmias developed after an acute TCA overdose, and RaVR of 3 mm or more was the only ECG variable that significantly predicted these adverse outcomes.

TL;DR: Implementation of the Ottawa Ankle Rules would result in significant savings of health care dollars despite the cost of missed fractures including litigation costs.

TL;DR: In this setting, the 43.5-second mean time savings does not warrant the use of lights and siren during ambulance transport, except in rare situations or clinical circumstances.

TL;DR: Simplified written materials may help patients who do not understand current standard materials and health care providers should simplify written materials to make them understandable to the greatest number of patients.

TL;DR: This study demonstrated a rapid and severe decrease in LES tone during prolonged cardiac arrest, and when ROSC occurred, LES tension increased quickly but did not return to baseline.