Academic emergency medicine : official journal of the Society for Academic Emergency Medicine
-
The Global Emergency Medicine Literature Review (GEMLR) conducts an annual search of peer-reviewed and grey literature relevant to global emergency medicine (EM) to identify, review, and disseminate the most important new research in this field to a worldwide audience of academics and clinical practitioners. ⋯ In 2012 there were more disaster and humanitarian response articles than in previous years. As in prior years, the majority of articles addressed the acute management of infectious diseases or the care of vulnerable populations such as children and pregnant women.
-
In critical care and emergency medicine research, obtaining consent can be problematic when patients present with life-threatening conditions. This issue is further complicated in children, as even while coherent, they are often incapable of making decisions regarding their own care. To enable the ethical conduct of research in such situations, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) of the United States has set recommendations for the conduct of research employing a waiver of consent. These regulations have been termed "exception from informed consent," or EFIC. As this is an evolving concept with limited pediatric experience, the authors conducted a review to examine the conduct of emergency research in the absence of prospectively obtained informed consent. Our review focused both on opinions and on the ability to conduct research without informed consent in life-threatening situations. ⋯ Limited data exist evaluating ethical issues in pediatric acute care resuscitation research. This review highlighted the fact that every proposal is unique and the method of obtaining consent (or waiver) requires careful consideration by local ethics committees. Particular attention must be paid to use of the population selected for community consultation. Several studies highlighted the need to consider the use of alternatives to prospective informed consent to enable the conduct of research in emergency departments (EDs) in life-threatening situations. Future research should evaluate children's opinions on this topic.
-
The objective was to estimate the frequency of pregnancy testing among adolescent emergency department (ED) patients and to determine factors associated with testing. ⋯ A minority of female adolescent ED visits included pregnancy testing, even if patients presented with potential reproductive health complaints or received exposure to ionizing radiation. Small but statistically significant differences in pregnancy testing rates were noted based on age, race or ethnicity, ED disposition, and geographic region. Future studies should focus on designing quality improvement interventions to increase pregnancy testing in adolescent ED patients, especially among those in whom pregnancy complications or the risk of potentially teratogenic radiation exposure is higher.
-
Studies focusing on minor head injury in intoxicated patients report disparate prevalences of intracranial injury. It is unclear if the typical factors associated with intracranial injury in published clinical decision rules for computerized tomography (CT) acquisition are helpful in differentiating patients with and without intracranial injuries, as intoxication may obscure particular features of intracranial injury such as headache and mimic other signs of head injury such as altered mental status. This study aimed to estimate the prevalence of intracranial injury following minor head injury (Glasgow Coma Scale [GCS] score ≥14) in intoxicated patients and to assess the performance of established clinical decision rules in this population. ⋯ In this study, the prevalence of clinically important injury in intoxicated patients with minor head injury was significant. While the presence of the common features associated with intracranial injury in nonintoxicated patients should raise clinical suspicion for intracranial injury in intoxicated patients, the Canadian CT Head Rule and NEXUS criteria do not have adequate sensitivity to be applied in intoxicated patients with minor head injury.
-
Paramedics frequently attend older patients who have fallen and sustained suspected fractures, a population of patients who may be at risk of inadequate analgesic care. This prospective study aimed to describe the rate and effectiveness of analgesia administered by paramedics to older patients with suspected fractures secondary to falls and to identify predictive factors associated with provision of analgesia. ⋯ In this population of older people who fell and sustained suspected fractures, two-thirds received paramedic-administered analgesia. The majority of patients received clinically effective analgesia, and the presence of a suspected hip fracture increased the likelihood of receiving pain relief.