Annals of emergency medicine
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Randomized Controlled Trial Clinical Trial
Prehospital prophylactic lidocaine does not favorably affect outcome in patients with chest pain.
The purpose of our study was to determine the morbidity and mortality in initially stable patients presenting to paramedics with chest pain; to examine possible beneficial effects of its use, including reduction of sudden death syndrome in the prehospital and emergency department setting; and to determine if prophylactic lidocaine is associated with adverse effects in this patient population. ⋯ There are no benefits from the administration of prehospital prophylactic lidocaine in stable patients with chest pain; therefore, routine use in this setting appears unwarranted.
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Severe hypothermia with cardiopulmonary arrest often requires prolonged resuscitation while rewarming procedures are implemented. A 63-year-old male in cardiopulmonary arrest with a core body temperature of 23.7 C was resuscitated successfully after core rewarming by means of a two-chest-tube continuous thoracostomy lavage procedure. This lavage procedure resulted in effective and rapid rewarming after other conventional rewarming methods had failed.
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The streptococcal toxic shocklike syndrome is a recently recognized, multisystem disorder that shares many of the features of staphylococcal toxic shock syndrome, but is caused by toxins elaborated by group A beta-hemolytic Streptococcus. We describe a patient who fulfilled the major criteria for the clinical diagnosis of toxic shock syndrome (fever, hypotension, multisystem dysfunction, and diffuse macular erythroderma followed by desquamation) and who demonstrated serologic evidence suggesting streptococcal infection. In patients presenting with clinical findings consistent with a toxic shocklike syndrome, the emergency physician should consider streptococcal infection as a potential etiology.
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Numerous studies have shown initiation of bystander CPR to significantly improve survival from prehospital cardiac arrest. However, in emergency medical services (EMS) systems with very short response times, bystander CPR has not been shown to impact outcome. The purpose of this study was to determine the effect of bystander CPR on survival from out-of-hospital cardiac arrest in such a system. ⋯ Our data revealed improved survival rates when bystander CPR was initiated on victims of witnessed cardiac arrest in an EMS system with short response times.