Academic emergency medicine : official journal of the Society for Academic Emergency Medicine
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Review Meta Analysis
Effectiveness of Educational Interventions to Increase Primary Care Follow-up for Adults Seen in the Emergency Department for Acute Asthma: A Systematic Review and Meta-analysis.
Patients with asthma commonly present to emergency departments (ED) with exacerbations. Asthma guidelines recommend close follow-up with a primary care provider (PCP) after ED discharge; however, this linkage is often delayed or absent. The objective of this study was to assess whether ED-directed educational interventions improve office follow-up with PCPs after ED discharge for acute asthma. ⋯ ED-directed educational interventions targeting either patients or providers increase the chance of having office follow-up visits with PCPs after asthma exacerbations. Their impact on health-related outcomes (e.g., relapse and admissions) remains unclear.
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The objective of this study was to evaluate operational policies that may improve the proportion of eligible stroke patients within a population who would receive intravenous recombinant tissue plasminogen activator (rt-PA) and minimize time to treatment in eligible patients. ⋯ Given the potential societal benefits, continued efforts to deploy telemedicine appear warranted. Aligning the incentives between those who would have to fund the up-front technology investments and those who will benefit over time from reduced ongoing health care expenses will be necessary to fully realize the benefits of telemedicine for stroke care.
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The objective was to assess whether respiratory depression and supportive airway measures occurring during procedural sedation are associated with changes in peripheral tissue oxygen saturation (StO2 ). ⋯ Patients with respiratory depression and the use of supportive airway measures had greater changes in StO2 during procedural sedation than in patients who did not. Peripheral tissue oxygen saturation monitoring may be a useful tool for assessing respiratory adverse events in patients undergoing procedural sedation in the ED.