Annals of emergency medicine
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The growing number of aged in the United States will continue to increase the demand for medical services, including emergency care. In a medium-sized city, 22% of 14,400 emergency medical service responses were to patients over 65 years of age. ⋯ Men were more likely to suffer a cardiac condition; women, an injury. Elderly patients were 1.7 times more likely to require paramedic-accompanied transportation to hospital.
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The controversy concerning the mode of resuscitation in acute penetrating cardiac trauma has been resolved in recent years. Most large centers are aggressive, and pericardiocentesis is used in life-threatening situations only as a temporary measure until thoracotomy can be performed. There are at least 32 publications which recommended emergency department thoracotomy for resuscitation of the critically injured heart. ⋯ Most penetrating chest wounds are easily managed in the emergency department with fluid resuscitation and chest tube drainage. Patients who have an isolated penetrating cardiac injury will have the best prognosis; moribund patients who are suffering from extrathoracic injuries, especially CNS injuries, will have a dismal prognosis. The keys to successful resuscitation of the traumatized heart are a high index of suspicion, early recognition, and rapid intervention.
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All adult patients (102 cases) presenting to Bellevue Hospital Medical Center over a calendar year (1978) with core temperatures less than 35 C were studied. Statistically significant correlations between hypothermia and mortality were identified according to mental status, hypoxia, hypotension, hyperamylasemia, duration and severity of hypothermia, and history of exposure and alcohol ingestion. Mortality could not be predicted on the basis of season, age (if greater than 40 years old), sex, presence of infection, or presenting temperature (if greater than 26 C). ⋯ Prolonged hypothermia was uniformly associated with profound underlying medical disease. In patients presenting with temperatures less than 26 C, 50% of deaths resulted from temperature-induced ventricular arrhythmias. Alcoholics hypothermic from exposure had excellent prognoses; however, temperatures less than 26 C were associated with a marked and statistically significant incidence of death.