The Trauma Pro
JANUARY 28, 2025
In my last two posts, I reviewed some older papers on the efficacy of Andexxa (andexanet alfa) for the reversal of Factor Xa inhibitor anticoagulants. Those results were not very impressive, especially considering the high cost of this drug. In 2021, an article was published (reference 1) that performed a systematic review of the literature from 2017 to 2020.
Dr. Smith's ECG Blog
JANUARY 2, 2025
By Smith with comments from our electrophysiologist, Rehan Karim. (And of course Ken's comments at the bottom) An elderly obese woman with cardiomyopathy, Left bundle branch block, and chronic hypercapnea presented hypoxic with altered mental status. She was intubated. Bedside cardiac ultrasound showed moderately decreased LV function. CT of the chest showed no pulmonary embolism but bibasilar infiltrates.
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Sensible Medicine
JANUARY 23, 2025
Two health obsessions that I’ve never really understood are the supposed benefits of vitamin D (for every imaginable ill) and harm of seed oils. Dr. Bobby Dubois thinks a lot about the evidence behind health recommendations on his podcast. His research has led him to a pretty clear opinion about the role of seed oils in health and disease. Attentive Sensible Medicine readers will note that his take is a bit different from that expressed in a recent post.
ACEP Now
JANUARY 4, 2025
In recent years, emergency medicine, once the bastion of quick decision making, clinical acumen, and patient-centered care, has been quietly succumbing to a different forcethe slow but steady erosion of critical thinking. The culprit is the increasing reliance on protocolization and the diminishing autonomy of emergency physicians. This shift, intended to standardize care and mitigate error, is paradoxically undermining the very heart of medicinethe doctors ability to think critically, adapt to
Speaker: Simran Kaur, Co-founder & CEO at Tattva.Health
AI is transforming clinical trials—accelerating drug discovery, optimizing patient recruitment, and improving data analysis. But its impact goes far beyond research. As AI-driven innovation reshapes the clinical trial process, it’s also influencing broader healthcare trends, from personalized medicine to patient outcomes. Join this new webinar featuring Simran Kaur for an insightful discussion on what all of this means for the future of healthcare!
Don't Forget the Bubbles
MARCH 10, 2025
Challenging working conditions in health services, especially in emergency departments (ED), lead to high levels of stress and burnout. This contributes to the staff retention problem recognised by professional associations such as RCEM and ACEM. As well as being a practice and policy priority, there have been repeated calls for research to better understand the problem.
PEMBlog
MARCH 4, 2025
In this episode we dive into the resurgence of Mycoplasma pneumoniae an atypical bacterial cause of community-acquired pneumonia thats making waves in pediatric emergency medicine. Well cover its clinical presentation, epidemiology, diagnostic approach, and management, including why standard beta-lactam antibiotics wont work. Plus, well discuss whether M. pneumoniae even needs to be treated in the first place!
Emergency Care Today brings together the best content for emergency care practitioners from the widest variety of industry thought leaders.
EM Ottawa
JANUARY 9, 2025
In the acute care setting, steroids have various usages and indications, but their usage can often be nuanced. From adrenal crises to septic shock, severe community-acquired pneumonia, and even acute pharyngitis, steroids play a pivotal role in managing a variety of conditions encountered in the Emergency Department (ED). However, their use is far from straightforwardbalancing […] The post These are the ‘Roids you are looking for – Steroids in the ED appeared first on EMOttawa
Mind The Bleep
FEBRUARY 2, 2025
As a new F1 in August, it can feel like quite a daunting task to verify a death, particularly if you have never seen this done before. This step by step guide will take you through the process of death verification to help make this task easier as you settle into your new role. Verifying a Death You will usually be asked to verify a death by nursing staff from the ward the patient is on.
EMDocs
JANUARY 11, 2025
Author: Christopher Blanton, MD, MBA (EM Resident, UTSW / Dallas, TX); Joslin Gilley-Avramis, MD (EM Attending Physician, UTSW / Parkland Memorial Hospital) // Reviewed by: Sophia Grgens, MD (EM Physician, BIDMC, MA); Cassandra Mackey, MD (Assistant Professor of Emergency Medicine, UMass Chan Medical School); Brit Long, MD (@long_brit) Welcome to EM@3AM, an emDOCs series designed to foster your working knowledge by providing an expedited review of clinical basics.
Emergency Medicine Journal
JANUARY 21, 2025
Trauma remains a significant cause of mortality and morbidity. Non-compressible torso haemorrhage is one of the key drives of these mortality data. Our contemporary management has focused on damage control resuscitation, with a focus on haemorrhage control, haemostatic resuscitation and permissive hypotension. The evidence for permissive hypotension lacks the robustness as other treatments, such as tranexamic acid.
The Trauma Pro
MARCH 10, 2025
All trauma professionals need to keep up with the current thinking in their field. There are a variety of ways to do this, including lectures, courses, online curricula, meetings, and reading journal articles. The last method requires a bit of skill and patience. Many research papers are dry, long, and hard to read. Quite a few people do not have the patience to wade through them and get lost in all the details.
St. Emlyn
FEBRUARY 23, 2025
St.Emlyn's - Emergency Medicine #FOAMed What does it truly mean to be dead? In 2025, updates to Death by Neurological Criteria (DNC) challenge long-standing medical definitions, raising new ethical and practical questions. This post explores the latest AOMRC guidelines, the evolving role of brainstem death, and how these changes impact emergency and intensive care medicine.
Sensible Medicine
MARCH 12, 2025
As of Aug 30, 2024, the US FDA has granted approval for Comirnaty (Pfizer) and Spikevax (Moderna) and emergency use authorization for Novavax for use in fall 2024 COVID-19 vaccine programs. 1,2 Moderna and Pfizer have manufactured mRNA vaccines targeting the KP.2 SARS-CoV-2 variant, a descendent of the JN.1 strain, whereas the Novavax recombinant protein platform targets the JN.1 variant.
ACEP Now
JANUARY 5, 2025
Its 4 a.m., and youre three hours from the nearest tertiary care center. A young woman, 13 days post-tonsillectomy, comes into your rural emergency department (ED) coughing up blood. On exam, you see bright red blood trickling down her left tonsillar fossa. Her vital signs are normal, except for a heart rate of 115 bpm. Its going to take time to get her to a tertiary center.
Emergency Medicine Cases
JANUARY 7, 2025
Dr. Patricia Lee is an EM physician in Calgary, Alberta and an Assistant Professor at the University of Calgary in the Department of Emergency Medicine. She reached out to me after listening to Episode 200 How EM Experts Think Part 1 as a longtime supporter of EM Cases, to highlight the importance of recognizing challenges that female-identifying EM physicians may face before, during and after ED shifts.
The Skeptics' Guide to EM
FEBRUARY 1, 2025
Reference: Leonard JC et al. PECARN prediction rule for cervical spine imaging of children presenting to the emergency department with blunt trauma: a multicentre prospective observational study. Lancet Child Adolesc Health. June 2024. Date: Oct 15, 2024 Dr. Tabitha Cheng Guest Skeptic: Dr. Tabitha Cheng is a Southern California native and board-certified emergency medicine physician and completed an EMS fellowship as well.
PulmCCM
FEBRUARY 27, 2025
Balanced crystalloids are considered to be probably superior to normal saline as a resuscitation fluid in critically ill patients. But there are multiple balanced crystalloid products available, with varying compositions. Does the choice of balanced solution make a difference in patient outcomes from critical illness? Balanced solutions are formulated with electrolyte and solute concentrations closer to plasma’s, compared to normal saline’s simple composition of sodium and chloride (
EM Ottawa
FEBRUARY 6, 2025
Medicine often carries an aura of mystiquea profession elevated by society as a noble calling, a higher pursuit. But for those of us in the trenches, the reality is far simpler (: medicine is a job. A demanding, high-stakes, and sometimes unforgiving job, but a job nonetheless. This isnt a dismissal of its importance but […] The post There IS Beauty in Medicine appeared first on EMOttawa Blog.
Mind The Bleep
FEBRUARY 2, 2025
This guide is designed to help you identify the key areas you need to focus on when clerking a surgical patient. There are several differences when compared to clerking a medical patient, namely getting a more extensive surgical past medical history, examination and assessing frailty. Your clerking needs to be succint, pertinent and clear. Presenting Complaint This needs to be clear and brief – a headline to tell any reader why that patient has presented: Good example: “1/7 colicky R
EMDocs
MARCH 18, 2025
Today on the emDOCs cast with Brit Long, MD ( @long_brit) , we cover the literature on evaluation and management of massive hemoptysis. Episode 116: Massive Hemoptysis Definition: Hemoptysis is expectoration of blood from the respiratory tract; ranges from mild with small streaks of blood to cardiopulmonary compromise (1-5). Massive hemoptysis: no clear definition, ranges from 50 mL in a single expectoration to 100 mL in 24 hours to over 1 L in 48 hours.
Emergency Medicine Journal
JANUARY 21, 2025
This month’s update is by the Emergency Department of the University Hospital of Heraklion, Crete, Greece. We used a multimodal search strategy, drawing on free open-access medical education resources and literature searches. We identified the five most interesting and relevant papers (decided by consensus) and highlighted each paper’s main findings, key limitations and clinical bottom line.
The Trauma Pro
FEBRUARY 14, 2025
The Advanced Trauma Life Support course lists “classes of hemorrhage”, and various other sources list a similar classification for shock. I’ve not been able to pinpoint where these concepts came from, exactly. But I am sure of one thing: you will be tested on it at some point in your lifetime. Here’s the table used by the ATLS course: The question you will always be asked is: What class of hemorrhage (or what % of blood volume loss) is the first to demonstrate systolic hy
St. Emlyn
JANUARY 6, 2025
St.Emlyn's - Emergency Medicine #FOAMed How does pre-hospital emergency anaesthesia (PHEA) delivered by Helicopter Emergency Medical Services (HEMS) impacts trauma care timelines compared to emergency department RSI (EDRSI). This retrospective study explores time efficiency, injury severity, and patient outcomes, highlighting the role of HEMS in delivering critical care to severely injured patients in remote locations.
Sensible Medicine
MARCH 14, 2025
“Don’t worry about reading – you won’t be able to keep your eyes open. The only thing you need to learn this year is how to differentiate sick people from not sick people.” So said my program director during my internship. This comment might be one of the reasons I’ve been skeptical of sepsis screening. If there is one thing a medicine resident or hospitalist should be able to do well is identify the patients who are sick and need attention.
EB Medicine
JANUARY 7, 2025
In this episode, Sam Ashoo, MD interviews Nicholas Stark, MD, MBA & Zaid Altawil, MD about the Emergency Medicine Innovation Collaborative 1. Discussion on EMIC - Overview of the collaborative - Background and formation during the pandemic in late 2021 2. Growth of EMIC - Expansion from three members to over 500 - Focus areas: Education, mentorship, opportunity 3.
Emergency Medicine Cases
JANUARY 28, 2025
On this month's EM Quick Hits podcast: Anand Swaminathan on optimizing RSI medication timing, Brittany Ellison ED boarding challenges in older patients and solutions to ED crowding and flow, Dave Jeromeon managing prolonged tourniquet application, Nour Khatib and Phil Gillick on a rural peer support case, Jesse McLaren on ECG reciprocal changes in acute coronary occlusion, and Melody Ngon practical nutrition tips for shift workers.
The Skeptics' Guide to EM
MARCH 1, 2025
Reference: Bannelier et al. Failure rate of D-dimer testing in patients with high clinical probability of pulmonary embolism: Ancillary analysis of three European studies. AEM Feb 2025 Date: February 27, 2025 Guest Skeptic:Dr. Lauren Westafer an Assistant Professor in the Department of Emergency Medicine at the University of Massachusetts Medical School Baystate.
PulmCCM
JANUARY 15, 2025
Pulse oximeters for healthcare and consumer use are calibrated on patients with lighter skin. Manufacturers have recognized the devices’ suboptimal performance in darker-skinned patients for decades, but they have faced no serious regulatory or legal pressure to act. In 2013, FDA issued a suggestion that manufacturers test devices on patients “with a range of skin pigmentations.” But the standard was lax: only two darkly pigmented subjects, or 15% of the total pool were needed.
EM Ottawa
MARCH 27, 2025
TheOttawa DVT PoCUS Handbookis a peer-reviewed, practical guide designed to support emergency clinicians in the bedside diagnosis of deep vein thrombosis using point-of-care ultrasound (PoCUS). Developed by emergency medicine physicians at The Ottawa Hospital, this resource is tailored for learners and practitioners at all levels including medical students, residents, and staff physicians who […] The post Ottawa DVT PoCUS Handbook appeared first on EMOttawa Blog.
Mind The Bleep
FEBRUARY 2, 2025
Often one of the scariest things you can do as you will most likely be speaking to a more senior colleague in an unfamiliar speciality. However, as an F1, you may well know the patient best and therefore you may be best placed to refer the patient. Our Webinar Introduce yourself and say on whose behalf you are making the referral Remember, you hold all the information about the patient and are therefore in the driving seat Use the SBAR approach and you wont go far wrong Know why you are referrin
EMDocs
MARCH 4, 2025
Today on the emDOCs cast with Brit Long, MD ( @long_brit) , we cover the literature on evaluation and management of the adult patient with meningitis. Episode 115: Adult Meningitis Background: Meningitis is an inflammation of the subarachnoid space, the leptomeninges, and cerebrospinal fluid. Associated with a variety of causes, but a bacterial infection is one of the more dangerous ones.
ACEP Now
MARCH 10, 2025
Satonofuji Hisashi has been a career sumo wrestler since 1996. He is no champion wrestlerin fact, he is far from it. His highest attained rank was in the Makushita division in 2005, the third highest of six sumo divisions. Traditionally, the most elite wrestlers sat in a curtained area at the arenamakushita did not and the name thus translates to below the curtain.
The Trauma Pro
FEBRUARY 24, 2025
There are two broad categories of things that kill trauma patients. No, Im not talking about violent penetrating injury, falls, car crashes, or any other specific mechanisms. I am referring to the end events (on a macro scale) that take their lives. These two basic killers are: hemorrhage and brain injury. The vast majority of the time, a dying trauma patient has either suffered a catastrophic brain injury, or has ongoing and uncontrolled bleeding.
St. Emlyn
JANUARY 7, 2025
St.Emlyn's - Emergency Medicine #FOAMed Mastering likelihood ratios can transform your diagnostic skills. In this podcast with Rick and Greg, discover how likelihood ratios can enhance decision-making and improve patient care. The post Podcast – Likelihood Ratios: Critical Appraisal Nugget 12 appeared first on St.Emlyn's.
Sensible Medicine
FEBRUARY 17, 2025
John is sick, so I have big shoes to fill. Today’s study of the week is a cancer trial. I know many of you aren’t cancer doctors, and you are thinking about skipping this essay. Let me assure you: you will learn something. The trial has issues with control arm, skewed randomization (2:1), drop out and endpoints. It is a rollercoaster ride of critical appraisal.
The Bottom Line
JANUARY 30, 2025
Antibiotic Treatment for 7 versus 14 Days in Patients with Bloodstream Infections BALANCE Investigators. NEJM 2024; DOI: 10.1056/NEJMoa2404991 Clinical Question In hospitalised patients with bloodstream infections (BSI), is antibiotic treatment for 7 days, compared to treatment for 14 days, non-inferior with respect to mortality at 90 days?
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