The American journal of emergency medicine
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Bacterial meningitis is a relatively uncommon condition encountered in the emergency department and the constellation of symptoms varies. Hearing loss has been well documented in the literature as a complication of the disease process, but not as the presenting complaint. ⋯ Even with advances in therapy, bacterial meningitis still carries a significant mortality rate. Early diagnosis and treatment is critical to achieving good outcomes.
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Migraine headaches make up a significant proportion of emergency department visits. There are multiple pharmacologic treatment modalities for migraine abortive therapy; however, these treatments are rarely targeted to the precise area of pain and thus elicit multiple systemic effects. It has been well established in the anesthesia pain literature that occipital nerve blocks can provide not only immediate pain relief from occipital migraines, but can also result in a long-term resolution of occipital migraines. In this case report, we present how an occipital nerve block in the emergency department resulted in immediate and long-lasting resolution of a patient's occipital migraine.
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Case Reports
Pseudo-Wellens' syndrome and intermittent left bundle branch block in acute cholecystitis.
We present a case of a 54-year-old male patient who was admitted to our Emergency Department (ED) with localized epigastric pain. Inflammation markers, ultrasound, and CT scan were inconsistent with an initial diagnosis of cholecystitis. However, there was additional evidence of cholecystolithiasis. ⋯ A laparoscopic study confirmed acute cholecystitis. Coronary angiography showed no pathological processes associated with ACS. ECG abnormalities were initially ongoing, but were no longer detectable during an 8month follow up assessment.
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Negative pressure pulmonary edema (NPPE) is a clinical syndrome well described in the literature and easy to recognize in cases of suspicion, but probably underdiagnosed. It can be a cause of morbidity and admission to the intensive care unit of healthy young individuals. ⋯ It is a non-cardiogenic form of pulmonary oedema thought to be caused by the highly negative intra-thoracic pressure generated when trying to breathe against an acute obstruction. We report a case of NPPE after an airway obstruction in a young male patient.