Emergency medicine clinics of North America
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Airway control is one of the most critical interventions required for saving a life. It is essential that practitioners be as well trained as possible in the numerous techniques available to establish airway control. ⋯ Perhaps the most important aspect of advanced airway management is the ability to anticipate and prepare for the difficult airway. This article gives numerous options for the difficult airway situation.
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Emerg. Med. Clin. North Am. · Feb 2003
ReviewEvaluation and management of febrile infants in the emergency department.
Managing fever in pediatric patients has always been a high-risk aspect of emergency medicine, and this is especially true of infants. The task of correctly discerning "well" versus "ill" can be difficult for these patients because they cannot describe their symptoms and have not developed normal social behaviors. Recent studies, however, have greatly enhanced physicians' understanding of how best to manage these young patients. With this research comes an array of new recommendations for diagnosing and treating febrile infants, which can be incorporated into the practice of every emergency physician who cares for pediatric patients.
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Emerg. Med. Clin. North Am. · Feb 2003
ReviewProcedural sedation and analgesia for children in the emergency department.
PSA for children continues to be an integral part of the practice of emergency medicine. The advancement of knowledge for all health care professionals must continue so that pain and anxiety in children may be minimized during their visits to EDs.
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A better understanding of coronary syndromes allow physicians to appreciate UAP and AMI as part of a continuum of ACI. ACI is a life-threatening condition whose identification can have major economic and therapeutic importance as far as threatening dysrhythmias and preventing or limiting myocardial infarction size. The identification of ACI continues to challenge the skill of even experienced clinicians, yet physicians continue (appropriately) to admit the overwhelming majority of patients with ACI; in the process, they admit many patients without acute ischemia [2], overestimating the likelihood of ischemia in low-risk patients because of magnified concern for this diagnosis for prognostic and therapeutic reasons. ⋯ Serial measurements can greatly increase the sensitivity for AMI while maintaining their excellent specificity. Biomarkers cannot identify most patients with UAP. Finally, diagnostic technologies to evaluate ACI in selected populations, such as echocardiography, sestamibi perfusion imaging, and stress ECG, may have very good to excellent sensitivity; however, they have not been sufficiently studied.