The American journal of emergency medicine
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Medication nonadherence leads to worse health outcomes, increased healthcare service utilization, and increased overall healthcare costs. ⋯ We believe having a pharmacy providing medications to patients being discharged from the ED reduces barriers like cost, transportation, and pharmacy access patients face trying to fill prescriptions at their local pharmacy. All of these reductions in barriers provides an easier and more convenient method for patients to obtain their medications at discharge from the ED, reducing the risk of a repeat ED visit and subsequent hospital admission.
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Airway compromise is the second leading cause of potentially preventable death on the battlefield. Prehospital airway management is often unavoidable in a kinetic combat environment and expected to increase in future wars where timely evacuation will be unreliable and air superiority not guaranteed. We compared characteristics of survivors to non-survivors among combat casualties undergoing prehospital airway intubation. ⋯ We found an association between non-depolarizing paralytic and opioid receipt with 7-day survival among patients undergoing prehospital intubation. The literature would benefit from future multi-center randomized controlled trials to establish optimal pharmacologic strategies for trauma patients undergoing prehospital intubation.
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Observational Study
Risk of falls is associated with 30-day mortality among older adults in the emergency department.
Falls in older adults correlate with heightened morbidity and mortality. Assessing fall risk in the emergency department (ED) not only aids in identifying candidates for prevention interventions but may also offer insights into overall mortality risk. We sought to examine the link between fall risk and 30-day mortality in older ED adults. ⋯ ED fall risk assessments are linked to 30-day mortality. Screening may facilitate the stratification of older adults at risk for health deterioration.
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Despite similar diagnostic effectiveness for renal colic, computed tomography (CT) is more resource intensive than point-of-care ultrasound (PoCUS). We sought to compare Emergency Department (ED) length of stay (LOS) among patients with renal colic according to imaging modality utilized. We secondarily compared rates of infection, return ED visits, missed significant pathology, and urologic intervention. ⋯ Among patients with renal colic, PoCUS was associated with shorter ED LOS compared to CT, without differences in infection rates, return visits, or missed pathology. Patients with PoCUS plus CT had a higher rate of urologic interventions, suggesting PoCUS may have a role in identifying patients who would most benefit from CT.
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The goal of this study is to demonstrate the feasibility of referring patients for lung cancer screening (LCS) from the emergency department (ED) as a method to increase the uptake of LCS. ⋯ This pilot study suggests the feasibility and suggests initial indications of the efficacy of referring ED patients for LCS.