Academic emergency medicine : official journal of the Society for Academic Emergency Medicine
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Comparative Study
Can sick children tell time?: emergency department presentation patterns of critically ill children.
Children show a consistent pattern of ED use, with the majority of patients presenting during the late afternoon and evening hours. This study evaluated whether such a diurnal pattern also exists for critically ill children and the implications of such a presentation pattern on ED staffing. ⋯ Critically ill children present more uniformly throughout the day and do not have the same presentation patterns as ambulatory children. ED staffing should reflect this difference and not focus pediatric ED services simply on hours of peak pediatric visits.
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Editorial Comment Review
Out-of-hospital cardiac arrest and the Utstein style: meeting the customer's needs?
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To compare the emergency physician disposition decisions after observation periods of two, four, and six hours in a single cohort of ED patients with acute intentional ingestion to determine the accuracy of disposition decisions at two and four hours relative to the six-hour period of observation. ⋯ A large subset of overdose patients who are medically cleared after six hours of observation can be identified within two to four hours of presentation. No patient who was believed to be safe for medical clearance at either two or four hours had a complication within the six-hour time period (95% CI = 0% to 1.8%). These data suggest that asymptomatic patients with selected acute intentional ingestions can be released from medical observation in less than six hours.
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To examine the extent to which the Utstein style has been used for out-of-hospital cardiac arrest (OOHCA) research since its publication in 1991. The style was developed in an effort to standardize OOHCA research and reporting. ⋯ Six years after the release of the Utstein style for OOHCA research, fewer than 60% of OOHCA research articles actually use the style.