Academic emergency medicine : official journal of the Society for Academic Emergency Medicine
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Comparative Study
An emergency department guideline for the diagnosis of pulmonary embolism: an outcome study.
To assess the clinical outcome of patients suspected of pulmonary embolism (PE) following implementation of an emergency department (ED) diagnostic guideline. ⋯ Implementation of a PE diagnostic guideline in a community ED setting is safe and has improved the specificity of the enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay D-dimer test when compared with previous studies.
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Comparative Study
Intraoral ultrasound in the diagnosis and treatment of suspected peritonsillar abscess in the emergency department.
Peritonsillar abscess (PTA) can be a life-threatening disease and may lead to significant complications without drainage. ⋯ These data suggest that intraoral US of suspected PTA allows for reliable diagnosis and safe and accurate abscess drainage.
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Editorial Comparative Study
Level 1 cardiac arrest centers: learning from the trauma surgeons.
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The authors sought to validate a clinical decision rule that young adult (younger than 40 years) chest pain patients without known cardiac disease who had either no cardiac risk factors and/or a normal electrocardiogram (ECG) are at low risk (<1%) for acute coronary syndromes (ACS) and 30-day adverse cardiovascular (CV) events. ⋯ A modified clinical decision rule described a group of patients with a 0.14% risk of ACS that was free from 30-day adverse CV events.
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Comparative Study
Identification of out-of-hospital cardiac arrest clusters using a geographic information system.
To locate all out-of-hospital cardiac arrests (OHCAs) in Rochester, New York, and identify clusters of OHCAs, as well as clusters of patients who did not receive bystander cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR), in order to identify locations that may benefit from prevention efforts. ⋯ Out-of-hospital cardiac arrest can be plotted by geographic location. Clusters of OHCAs can be identified, which could be used to guide resource allocation. Clusters of OHCAs in which the patients did not receive bystander CPR can also be identified and could be used to direct educational programs. Census data can be superimposed on this information to identify characteristics of cluster locations and were used to demonstrate that the identified clusters were not simply the result of population density.