Emergency medicine Australasia : EMA
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Emerg Med Australas · Feb 2011
Case Reports'Mass allergy': acute scombroid poisoning in a deployed Australian Defence Force health facility.
On the last night of disaster relief operations in Sumatra, Indonesia, a mass casualty event occurred that involved deployed Australian Defence Force personnel. Symptoms of acute urticaria, angioedema, wheeze and gastrointestinal upset were experienced to varying degrees by 16% of the deployed element. The present report describes a presumed scombroid poisoning cluster and demonstrates the difficulties of operating in a deployed environment, the confusion that might be associated with evolving non-kinetic mass casualties, and provides a learning opportunity for an unusual mass casualty incident.
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Emerg Med Australas · Feb 2011
Case ReportsAcute compartment syndrome of the thigh following minor trauma in a patient on dual anti-platelet therapy.
Acute compartment syndrome of the thigh is a rare surgical emergency. It is usually associated with high energy trauma and concomitant femoral fracture. ⋯ Background anti-platelet therapy and hospital prescribed anticoagulants were likely contributors to this pathology. We describe these factors and discuss the issues associated with assessment of minor trauma in the anti-coagulated patient.
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Emerg Med Australas · Feb 2011
Scapular manipulation for reduction of anterior shoulder dislocation without analgesia: results of a prospective study.
To the best of knowledge, this was the first study of scapular manipulation technique (SMT) in Asia. We conducted this prospective study to report our experiences of reducing anterior shoulder dislocation by SMT without analgesia in a large study group in Iran. ⋯ The results of our study showed that SMT even without medication is a safe, rapid and relatively painless technique in reducing anterior shoulder dislocation in the ED that might reduce medical resource utilization and can be cost-effective.