Critical pathways in cardiology
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Patients admitted with acute and potential acute coronary syndromes (ACS) frequently required accompaniment by a registered nurse from the emergency department (ED) to inpatient telemetry beds. We tested the hypothesis that telemetry transport monitoring for patients with acute and potential ACS is of limited utility. We conducted a prospective cohort study of patients who were admitted from the ED with acute and potential ACS. ⋯ The total nurse time out of the ED spent transporting was 13.6 minutes (SD 5.2, range 4-40). The routine use of nurses accompanying patients admitted with acute and potential acute coronary syndromes is of limited utility. Patient transportation without nurses may help alleviate ED overcrowding by saving almost 15 minutes of nursing time currently being used for transport without measurable benefit.
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What is the successful cardiopulmonary resuscitation? It is the few minutes postcardiopulmonary arrest that can answer. Twenty to 40 percent of patients who sustained cardiac arrest are initially resuscitated, but only 10% survive to hospital discharge, and more than 60% of victims succumb within 24 hours. This high fatality rate in the early hours and days after successful resuscitation is mainly related to the acute, intense, and reversible form of postresuscitation myocardial dysfunction (stunning) together with the ventricular tachyarrhythmia. ⋯ Herein I reviewed most of the published relevant articles concerning the causes, underlying mechanism, and the updated trials for management of postresuscitation myocardial stunning. I do agree that not only the restoration of the circulation but also long-term outcome should be the aim of resuscitation, and I readdress the role of epinephrine, dobutamine, biphasic defibrillator, with the new promising agent (ie, potassium channel opener), Delta-opioid receptor agonist, unloading intracellular calcium, antioxidants, and therapeutic hypothermia to halt this period of stunning. This will improve the outcome of the resuscitation efforts.
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Identifying acute coronary syndrome is a difficult task in the emergency department because symptoms may be atypical and the electrocardiogram has low sensitivity. In this prospective cohort study done in a tertiary community emergency hospital, we developed and tested a neural diagnostic tree in 566 consecutive patients with chest pain and no ST-segment elevation for the diagnosis of acute coronary syndrome. Multivariate regression and recursive partitioning analysis allowed the construction of decision rules and of a neural tree for the diagnosis of acute myocardial infarction and acute coronary syndrome. ⋯ Negative likelihood ratios were 0.02 and 0.1, respectively. It is concluded that this simple and easy-to-use neural diagnostic tree was very accurate in the identification of non-ST segment elevation chest pain patients without acute coronary syndrome. Patients identified as low probability of disease could receive immediate stress testing and be discharged if the test is negative.
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Management of chest pain patients in the emergency department has been a dilemma because of difficulty in identifying those who can be immediately discharged and those who need to be hospitalized. We assessed the efficacy of a probability stratification model and a systematic diagnostic strategy in 1003 consecutive chest pain patients prospectively evaluated and stratified for acute coronary syndromes according to chest pain characteristics and admission electrocardiogram. Patients with no suspicion of acute coronary syndromes (n = 224) were immediately discharged, whereas those with very-high probability (n =119) were admitted to the coronary care unit. ⋯ For patients with no ST-segment elevation, chest pain type was the strongest independent predictor of acute coronary syndromes. It is concluded that chest pain type is the best single diagnostic tool to rule in/out acute coronary syndromes on admission to the emergency department. Patients with suspicious chest pain must have serum creatine kinase-MB measurements up to 9 hours postadmission to rule out acute myocardial infarction.