The American journal of emergency medicine
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Emergency departments (EDs) are important to detect child physical abuse. A structured approach will contribute to an adequate detection of abused children at the ED. ⋯ In the Netherlands, these American Academy of Pediatrics guidelines have been adopted for the clinical process of child abuse detection. Here, we describe the outcome of the clinical process in the year 2010 with 65 cases of suspected child abuse out of 3660 children presenting at an ED, and we discuss the strengths and pitfalls of this current clinical approach.
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Case Reports
A prepatellar Morel-Lavallée lesion in a pedestrian vs automobile collision: a case report and discussion.
A small truck collided with a 67-year-old female pedestrian. She sustained blunt, closed trauma to her right knee, and developed a prepatellar Morel-Lavallée lesion (MLL). A MLL is a closed soft tissue degloving injury, resulting from high-energy shearing forces, which separate the skin and subcutaneous tissue from the underlying fascia. ⋯ Most reported cases are proximal to the pelvis, whereas the few reported peri–knee MLLs involve young athletes or postsurgical complications. To our knowledge, this is the third reported case of a non–sport-related MLL of the knee, all of which involved high-inertia force to the knee. Therefore, MLL of the knee should be considered in patients with knee trauma, particularly in the setting of pedestrians struck by motor vehicles.
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Case Reports
Unilateral neck pain: a case of Eagle syndrome with associated nontraumatic styloid fracture.
We present a case of Eagle syndrome in a 77-year-old woman with associated aneurysm and nontraumatic styloid process fracture, without history of tonsillectomy, who presented to the emergency department. The first set of symptoms associated with the elongation of the temporal styloid process and/or the calcification of the stylomandibular or stylohyoid ligaments was described by Eagle in 1937. Classically, unilateral pain in the oropharynx radiating to the neck and face that is exacerbated by head turning and neck rotation is characteristic of Eagle syndrome. ⋯ Eagle syndrome is a rare but important differential that the emergency physician must consider in a patient with unilateral neck pain and positional neurological symptoms with head turning and in posttonsillectomy patients. Patients with medical history of Eagle syndrome presenting with neck pain and especially neurological symptomsmust be thoroughly evaluated for carotid and jugular venous injury. Specifically, the decision to obtain computed tomography and computed tomographic angiography to evaluate for carotid artery injury is important for patient management and disposition.
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This study investigated the diagnostic yield of invasive coronary angiography (CAG) and the impact of noninvasive test (NIV) in patients presented to emergency department (ED) with acute chest pain. ⋯ The diagnostic yield of CAG was only 65% in low- to intermediate-risk ED patients with acute chest pain. Performing of NIV provided only modest improvement in diagnostic yield of CAG. The unexpectedly low diagnostic yield might be attributable to the underuse of NIV and misinterpretation of physicians. We suggest the use of NIV as a gatekeeper to discriminate patients who require CAG and/or revascularization, and for this, better risk stratification and appropriate application of NIV are required.
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Despite the fact that caffeine is the most commonly used stimulant in modern society, cases of caffeine overdose are relatively rare, with fatalities reported from doses of 10 g and higher (Nord J Psychiatry. 2006;60:97-106). Large doses produce symptoms associated with stimulation of the cardiovascular, central nervous, and gastrointestinal symptoms (Associates of the California Poison Control Center, Poisoning and Drug Overdose, pp. 142-143. 5th Ed). We present the first reported case of a man with delayed presentation to the emergency department after ingesting 24 g of caffeine in a suicide attempt who suffered complications of severe rhabdomyolysis and acute renal failure requiring subsequent hemodialysis.