The American journal of emergency medicine
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Infectious endocarditis (IE) is a potentially deadly disease without therapy and can cause a wide number of findings and symptoms, often resembling a flu-like illness, which makes diagnosis difficult. ⋯ Emergency physicians should consider IE in the patient with flu-like symptoms and risk factors. Appropriate evaluation and management can significantly reduce disease morbidity and mortality.
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Comparative Study Observational Study
Comparison of sonographic inferior vena cava and aorta indexes during fluid administered in children.
This prospective, observational study evaluated changes in ultrasound measurements of the inferior vena caval index (IVCI), the aorta diameter/IVC diameter index (Ao/IVCD), and the aorta area/IVC area index (Ao/IVCA) during fluid administration in children requiring intravenous fluid administration. ⋯ Ao/IVCA showed better correlations with the volume of fluid administered than IVCI and Ao/IVCA. Ao/IVCA might be a promising index for assessing the effects of fluid administration.
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The prediction of emergency department (ED) disposition at triage remains challenging. Machine learning approaches may enhance prediction. We compared the performance of several machine learning approaches for predicting two clinical outcomes (critical care and hospitalization) among ED patients with asthma or COPD exacerbation. ⋯ Based on nationally-representative ED data, machine learning approaches improved the ability to predict disposition of patients with asthma or COPD exacerbation.
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The utilization of smartphone-based technology and applications to streamline patient care provides an exciting opportunity for quality improvement research. As traditional communication methods such as paging have repeatedly been shown to be susceptible to errors and inefficiency that can delay patient care, smartphones continue to be investigated as means of improving inter-hospital communication and patient outcomes. ⋯ The use of smartphones can positively impact patient care; however, these benefits must be balanced with the responsibility to protect patient privacy and confidentiality. In order to continue to support HCGM's expansion and integration into daily practice, further data-driven studies into HCGM-specific interventions must be pursued.
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This work focuses on a real-life patient transportation problem derived from emergency medical services (EMS), whereby providing ambulatory service for emergency requests during disaster situations. Transportation of patients in congested traffic compounds already time sensitive treatment. ⋯ This paper will discuss enhancing the response-time of EMS providers by improving the ambulance routing problem (ARP). A genetic based algorithm is proposed to efficiently guide the ARP while simultaneously solving two scenarios.