The American journal of emergency medicine
-
The purpose of this study was to test the efficacy of prehospital administration of tranexamic acid (TXA) to injured patients on mortality, thromboembolic events and need for blood transfusion in a level 1 trauma center. ⋯ Prehospital TXA administration is associated with less in-hospital blood transfusion and massive transfusion protocol (MTP). There is no significant increase in the thromboembolic events and mortality, however, further evaluation in larger clinical trials is needed.
-
The Mortality in Emergency Department Sepsis (MEDS) score can be used to stratify ED patients with suspected infections according to mortality risk. However, it has yet to be externally validated for patients having bloodstream infections. ⋯ The MEDS score is an excellent predictor of short-term outcomes in patients with community-onset bacteremia because it provides estimates with higher calibration and discrimination than those of the other scoring systems.
-
Inpatient hallway beds are one solution to mitigate emergency department (ED) crowding due to boarding of admitted patients. Alternative Care Areas (AltCA) beds are located in inpatient hallways, cardiac catheterization lab, and endoscopy. We examined whether AltCA beds were associated with increased risk of patient safety and quality outcomes: transfer to Intensive Care Unit (ICU), mortality, hospital-acquired infections (HAI), falls, and 72-hour hospital readmission. ⋯ Patients in AltCA beds did not have increased risk of patient safety and quality outcomes but rather decreased risk of transfer to ICU and HAI than standard inpatient beds.
-
The Toxicology Investigator's Consortium (ToxIC) maintains a prospective case registry of all patients that have been managed at the bedside by medical toxicologists. We set out to characterize the differences in toxicological suicide attempts between men and women among adult patients with poisonings managed by medical toxicologists. ⋯ In our study, we found that there were more females than males who attempted suicide by self-poisoning; and more of them used pharmaceuticals than males. In contrast, a greater number of males used nonpharmaceuticals such as alcohol. We did not find large sex-differences in suicide completion rates, routes of administration, or subsequent symptomologies. In summary, sex-based differences were observed between adult patients with suicidal-intent exposures/ingestions managed at the bedside by medical toxicologists.
-
The sepsis order set at our institution was created with the intent to facilitate the prompt initiation of appropriate sepsis care. Once clinical features meeting criteria for systemic inflammatory response syndrome (SIRS) are identified and an infectious source is considered, a "sepsis huddle" is concomitantly initiated. The sepsis huddle was implemented in March of 2016 in order to increase compliance with the sepsis bundles. ⋯ Our established order set has automated some of these reassessment features to facilitate compliance. Sepsis huddle initiation also triggers a department staff member to track the timing and completion of serial blood draws. Utilizing and adhering to the guidelines of this methodology in the management of these patients has enabled our hospital to improve benchmarking compliance from previously underperforming at the 31st and 49th percentiles in 2015, prior to initiation of the huddle, to a peak compliance at the 81st and 91st percentiles in 2016 and 65th and 83rd percentiles in 2017 for the 3-hour and 6-hour bundles respectively.