The American journal of emergency medicine
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Spinal epidural hematoma (SEH) is an uncommon but serious emergency condition rare cases of spontaneously or following a minor traumatic event without bony injury. ⋯ Emergency physicians must maintain a high index of suspicion for spinal epidural hematomas in patients with a history of massage or chiropractic manipulation with neurologic complaints, because delays in diagnosis may worsen clinical outcome.
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Injury patterns and mechanisms related to refrigerator and freezer utilization in the United States.
Refrigerators and freezers (R/F) are a common household item and injury patterns associated with these appliances are not well characterized. We aimed to characterize the injury patterns, mechanisms, and affected body parts in patients treated in the emergency departments nationally, hypothesizing that injury patterns would differ by age group. ⋯ Retrospective.
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Emergency Department (ED) patients presenting with spontaneous epistaxis who have anterior nasal packing are routinely prescribed systemic prophylactic antibiotics in spite of the lack of supporting evidence-based literature. Although there is literature that discusses infection rates with nasal packing for epistaxis and prophylactic antibiotics prescribing practices of otolaryngologists, this is the first study to our knowledge that examines the practices of emergency physicians. ⋯ The absence of infection supports previous findings and suggests that prophylactic antibiotic use for nasal packing in spontaneous epistaxis patients is not necessary. Further randomized controlled studies are necessary to definitively support this practice change.
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The early identification of septic shock patients at high risk of poor outcome is essential to early initiate optimal treatments and to decide on hospital admission. Biomarkers are often used to evaluate the severity. In prehospital settings, the availability of biomarkers, such as lactate, is restricted. In this context, clinical tools such as skin mottling score (SMS) and capillary refill time (CRT) are more suitable. In this study, we describe prehospital SMS and CRT's ability to predict mortality of patients with septic shock initially cared in the prehospital setting by a mobile intensive care unit. ⋯ In this study, we report an association between prehospital SMS and CRT, and mortality of patients with septic shock. SMS and CRT are simple tools that could be used to optimize the triage and to decide early intensive care admission.
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It is challenging for emergency physicians (EPs) to distinguish between patients with life-threatening and benign headaches. We examined the effect of peer influence on computed tomography use by EPs for patients with headache and evaluated the peer influence effect in EPs with different levels of risk tolerance. ⋯ We observed that peer influence is an effective way to improve CT use rate and emergency department LOS for patients with isolated headache, especially for most risk-tolerant physicians. These findings could enhance the development of appropriate guidelines to assist ED physicians' CT use.