Academic emergency medicine : official journal of the Society for Academic Emergency Medicine
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Traumatic injury and its sequelae remain a major, unrecognized public health problem in North America. Traumatic injury is the principal cause of death in patients aged 1-44 years and the overall leading cause of life-years lost in the United States. Recognizing this, the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute (NHLBI), in conjunction with other federal agencies, organized a conference in June 2000 to discuss the basic and clinical research needs that could lead to improved outcomes following cardiopulmonary or post injury resuscitation. ⋯ A coordinated trauma research program should aim to replicate the success achieved by such programs; however, a centralized federal "home" for trauma research does not exist. Consequently, the existing limited research support is derived from NIH institutes in addition to other federal and state agencies. This report serves to describe some of the obstacles and outline various strategies and priorities for basic science, clinical, and translational trauma resuscitation research.
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To determine who reads plain film radiographs, how quickly radiologists' interpretations are available, how many initial readings require correction, and how satisfied emergency physicians (EPs) are with radiology in emergency departments (EDs) with emergency medicine (EM) residency programs. ⋯ This study summarizes the perceptions of EPs regarding radiology services; the findings must be interpreted with caution, given the lack of external validation. Nevertheless, EPs report that many EM residency programs depend on EPs' interpretations of radiographs. Emergency physicians report that attending radiologists rarely read images on nights and weekends and that images are misread more frequently at these times. Although EPs were satisfied with many aspects of radiology, EPs expressed the most dissatisfaction with turnaround times and misreads.