The American journal of emergency medicine
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Randomized Controlled Trial Multicenter Study
Integration of lung ultrasound in the diagnostic reasoning in acute dyspneic patients: A prospective randomized study.
Misdiagnosis in acute dyspneic patients (ADP) has consequences on their outcome. Lung ultrasound (LUS) is an accurate tool to improve diagnostic performance. The main goal of this study was to assess the determinants of increased diagnostic accuracy using LUS. ⋯ LUS decreases the NUD in ADP. The ultrasound frequency of use decreased the NUD in ADP clinical cases with LUS data.
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In the United States, over 350,000 cardiac arrests occur outside of the hospital and 209,000 occur in the hospital. Shockable rhythms such as ventricular fibrillation (VF) have a survival rate of 20-30% outside of the hospital setting. Dual Sequential Defibrillation (DSD) has demonstrated success in terminating VF that is refractory to multiple attempts using a single defibrillator. ⋯ Studies have shown success in using DSD to treat refractory VF. However, further studies are necessary to assess the efficacy and safety of DSD compared to the standard of care treating refractory VF.
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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.
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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.