Emergency medicine Australasia : EMA
-
Emerg Med Australas · Dec 2024
'You mean you're not doing it already?' A national sentinel toxico-surveillance system for detecting illicit, emerging and novel psychoactive drugs in presentations to emergency departments.
Patients presenting to the ED after using illicit drugs, including novel psychoactive substances, are a unique source of information on substances that are directly causing acute harm in the community. Conventionally, illicit drug intoxications are assessed and managed in EDs based on self-report and presenting symptoms, with no objective data on the causative agent. ⋯ The key benefit of EDNA is the capacity to provide timely laboratory-confirmed toxicology data on emerging drug-related threats in the community. This leads to improvements in clinical, forensic laboratory and public health harm reduction responses, reflecting rapid translation of the research.
-
Emerg Med Australas · Dec 2024
Risk factors for older people re-presenting to the emergency department with falls: A case-control analysis.
Falls are a leading cause for ED presentations among older adults. Existing secondary falls prevention interventions have not been shown to decrease fall-related ED re-presentation, indicating a need to better understand contributing factors. Our aim was to evaluate risk factors for fall re-presentations among the older patient population presenting to the ED. ⋯ The present study failed to identify factors independently associated with ED fall re-presentation, suggesting that the factors are complex and inter-related. Two high-risk populations were identified - those from RACF and those initially presenting with falls not resulting in serious injury.
-
Emerg Med Australas · Dec 2024
Long-term trends in incidence and outcomes of rib fractures: A population-based data linkage study from New South Wales, Australia.
Determine long-term trends in population-based incidence and outcomes of rib fracture hospitalisations. ⋯ Rib fracture hospitalisations have increased with older patients driving this trend.
-
Emerg Med Australas · Dec 2024
Just a head knock? Emergency physicians need to get serious about concussion.
Attention and awareness regarding concussion injury in Australia have significantly increased in the last decade. Although most of this increase is because of discussion regarding concussions from sporting endeavours, the majority of concussions are from non-sport environments including motor vehicle crashes, workplace incidents, falls, accidents, assault and intimate partner violence. ⋯ Our Opinion is to provide a constructive discussion as well as calling for ACEM to support research to provide evidence-based data. Finally, we provide some recommendations that could be implemented immediately to improve clinical practice for presentations of concussion injuries in EDs.
-
Emerg Med Australas · Dec 2024
Trauma team activation for older patients with pelvic fractures: Are current criteria adequate?
The present study aimed to identify the impact of age on current trauma team activation (TTA) processes and outcomes for patients with pelvic fractures. ⋯ Current TTA criteria based on higher energy mechanisms and traditional vital sign thresholds are inadequate for identifying injury in older patients. Sensitive triage criteria and increased clinician awareness are required to enhance injury recognition and improve outcomes in older trauma patients.