Determine the effect that increased medical surgical (med/surg) bed occupancy has on the time interval from admission order to arrival in the bed for the patients admitted from the emergency department (ED).
A 26-year-old male presented to the emergency department for right foot pain and deformity after inverting his foot while base running playing baseball.
A 42-year-old male presented to the emergency department with pain and swelling of his distal right wrist. Bedside ultrasound placed over the swelling revealed a pseudoaneurysm of the radial artery. The patient received percutaneous thrombin injection of the aneurysm sac followed by direct ultrasound compression therapy of the pseudoaneurysm neck, resulting in thrombosis of the sac. The use of bedside ultrasound by the emergency physician led to appropriate care and proper disposition for definitive management.
To determine the point prevalence of urine bilirubin, urine hemoglobin and urobilinogen in blunt trauma patients, and to evaluate its utility as a screening tool for intra-abdominal injury.
To determine the prevalence of adverse events in elderly trauma patients with isolated blunt thoracic trauma, and to identify variables associated with these adverse events.
Spinal immobilization is one of the most commonly performed pre-hospital procedures. Little research has been done on the movement of the neck during immobilization and extrication.
Sudden, unexpected arrest-related death (ARD) has been associated with drug abuse, extreme delirium or certain police practices. There is insufficient surveillance and causation data available. We report 12 months of surveillance data using a novel data collection methodology.
Methamphetamine (MA) use is becoming commonplace, and emergency physicians (EPs) are seeing patients with abuse-associated complications. Previous reports have described inhalational and intravenous routes. We present the second case of rectal MA abuse in the literature. Trans-rectal use is important for EPs to consider because ongoing absorption of massive quantities may be averted upon detection. Additionally, trans-rectal abuse risks anorectal trauma and vascular necrosis with colonic perforation.
Autosomal dominant polycystic kidney disease may present to the emergency department (ED) with vomiting, abdominal pain or hernias, renal insufficiency or failure, or bleeding from cerebral aneurysms. A 37-year-old man presented to the ED with signs and symptoms of incarcerated inguinal hernia. Laboratory studies showed renal failure with anion gap acidosis, and bedside ultrasound showed multicystic kidneys. Computed tomography confirmed the diagnosis. Emergency physicians should be aware of this common connective tissue defect and its serious associated conditions.
Ambulance response times in Santa Barbara County for 2006 are analyzed using point process techniques, including kernel intensity estimates and K-functions. Clusters of calls result in significantly higher response times, and this effect is quantified. In particular, calls preceded by other calls within 20 km and within the previous hour are significantly more likely to result in violations. This effect appears to be especially pronounced within semi-rural neighborhoods.
A previously healthy 14-year-old girl presented to the emergency department with high fever, cough, shortness of breath and right lobar pneumonia on chest radiograph.
Premature infants are at higher risk of developing serious bacterial infections (SBI). However, the incidence of SBI in ex-premature infants presenting to the emergency department (ED) remains undetermined. The objective of this study is to examine the incidence of SBI in ex-premature infants with a postconceptional age of less than 48 weeks presenting to a pediatric ED.
In many academic emergency departments (ED), physicians are asked to record clinical data for research that may be time consuming and distracting from patient care. We hypothesized that non-medical research assistants (RAs) could obtain historical information from patients with acute abdominal pain as accurately as physicians.
This Institutional Review Board-approved, prospective, observational study compared the clinical performance of senior medical students in an emergency medicine (EM) clerkship using a clinical behavioral evaluation tool in which one group had mandatory, topic specific readings and the other did not.
The immense body of knowledge that emergency medicine (EM) encompasses is constantly growing and ever changing. Textbooks build a strong foundation for the EM resident, but journal articles critical for modifying and improving EM practices are equally important for a well-rounded education. Determining which journal articles are vital to an EM residency education is a challenge. Lacking a formalized list of key articles available to EM residents and realizing that a list of articles without a guide may be difficult and confusing for novice readers, we created the “Colorado Compendium”: a recommended reading list, limited to 100 articles with accompanying summaries, tailored to emergency medicine residents.
A 26-year-old male with a history of a work-related back injury presented to the emergency department complaining of several weeks of low back pain radiating down his left leg.
An intoxicated 29-year-old male presented to the emergency department after diving into a pool with reported loss of consciousness and complaining of neck pain.
Perhaps one of the greatest achievements in medicine to date, organ transplantation has transformed the lives of thousands – bringing life to those who would surely have died without it.
A controversial term first described by Saunders and Harbaugh1 in 1984, Second Impact Syndrome (SIS) consists of two events. Typically, it involves an athlete suffering post-concussive symptoms following a head injury.
To estimate the sensitivity and specificity of emergency department (ED) ultrasound for the detection of solid organ injury following blunt abdominal trauma.
Since the inception in 1655 of The Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society,1 one of the world’s first scientific journals,2 the subscription-based journal has been the traditional model for disseminating scientific and medical knowledge.
There is no doubt that in today’s practice of emergency medicine it is imperative to be familiar with how the law relates to administrative and clinical practice. It is my pleasure to announce, as section editor, the new Legal Medicine section of the Western Journal of Emergency Medicine. It is anticipated that the articles will cover a variety of areas and cases in the law. Some articles may focus on a particular disease or entity, with representative malpractice cases, and clinical caveats. Other articles may focus on legal concepts that enter the arena of emergency medicine. I have provided brief examples of each of these in this initial manuscript. Other articles could also cover original research related to law such as the standard of care in a given clinical situation or legal concepts such as consent, do-not-resuscitate, and AMA among others. I am hopeful that it will be of great interest to the readers. We welcome submissions and contributions for consideration.
Clitoral priapism is a rare condition that is associated with an extended duration of clitoral erection due to local engorgement of clitoral tissue resulting in pain. Although the pathophysiology is not completely understood, it has been associated with specific classes of medications, diseases that alter clitoral blood flow or others associated with small to large vessel disease. We present a case report of a 26-year-old patient who developed clitoral priapism without a clear medication or disease related etiology. The patient was treated with opiates, imipramine, non-steroidal anti-inflammatory medication, and local ice packs. She recovered uneventfully.