The American journal of emergency medicine
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Multicenter Study
Factors influencing the development of antibiotic associated diarrhea in ED patients discharged home: risk of administering intravenous antibiotics.
Antibiotic-associated diarrhea (AAD) and Clostridium difficile infection (CDI) are well-known outcomes from antibiotic administration. Because emergency department (ED) visits frequently result in antibiotic use, we evaluated the frequency of AAD/CDI in adults treated and discharged home with new prescriptions for antibiotics to identify risk factors for acquiring AAD/CDI. ⋯ Intravenous antibiotic therapy administered to ED patients before discharge was associated with higher rates of AAD and with 2 cases of CDI. Care should be taken when deciding to use broad-spectrum IV antibiotics to treat ED patients before discharge home.
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Opioid overdose (OD) is the primary cause of death among drug users globally. Personal and social determinants of overdose have been studied before, but the environmental factors lacked research attention. Area deprivation or presence of addiction clinics may contribute to overdose. ⋯ The identified clusters of increased incidence-urban overdose hotspots-suggest a link between environment characteristics and overdoses. This highlights a need to establish overdose education and naloxone distribution in the overdose hotspots.
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Randomized Controlled Trial
Can the new McGrath laryngoscope rival the GlideScope Ranger portable video laryngoscope? A randomized manikin study.
We hypothesized that novices would be able to use the McGrath MAC (Aircraft Medical Ltd, Edinburgh, UK) equally as well as the GlideScope Ranger (Verathon, Inc, Bothell, WA) for intubation in regular simulated airways. ⋯ The intubation performance of novices using the McGrath MAC was equal to their performance using the GlideScope Ranger in regular simulated airways.
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There has been a rise in advanced diagnostic imaging (ADI) use in the emergency department (ED). Increased utilization may contribute to longer length of stay (LOS), but prior reports have not considered improved methods for modeling skewed LOS data. ⋯ Generalized linear model offered an improved modeling approach compared to OLS and quantile regression. Consideration of such techniques may facilitate a more complete view of the effect of ADI on ED LOS.
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European recommendations on the management of acute pulmonary embolism (APE) divide patients into 3 risk categories: high, intermediate, and low. Mortality has previously been estimated at 3% to 15% in the intermediate group. The aim of this study was to use a new metric "ischemic electrocardiographic (ECG) patterns" to more precisely estimate the risk (complications or death) of APE patients identified as "intermediate risk" by current European Society of Cardiology (ESC) criteria. ⋯ In patients with APE, an ischemic ECG pattern on hospital admission, when identified in addition to classic risk markers, is an independent risk factor for worse in-hospital outcomes.