Academic emergency medicine : official journal of the Society for Academic Emergency Medicine
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Acute appendicitis (AA) is the most common surgical emergency in children. Accurate and timely diagnosis is crucial but challenging due to atypical presentations and the inherent difficulty of obtaining a reliable history and physical examination in younger children. ⋯ Presence of AA is more likely in patients with undifferentiated abdominal pain migrating to the RLQ or when cough/hop pain is present in the physical examination. Once AA is suspected, no single history, physical examination, laboratory finding, or score attained on PAS can eliminate the need for imaging studies. Operating characteristics of ED-POCUS are similar to those reported for RUS in literature for diagnosis of AA. In ED patients suspected of AA, a positive ED-POCUS is diagnostic and obviates the need for CT or MRI while negative ED-POCUS is not enough to rule out AA.
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This retrospective chart review examined the rate of acute chest syndrome (ACS) in febrile children (aged 3 months to 21 years) with sickle cell disease and used recursive partitioning to determine which clinical factors were predictive of a diagnosis of ACS. Over the course of 2 years, 697 children made 1,837 visits to one of two pediatric emergency departments. ACS was diagnosed in 185 (10%) of the visits.
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The primary objective of this study was to determine the percentage of clinically adequate (CA) fundoscopic images that could be obtained using the Pan Optic iExaminer system to perform nonmydriatic fundoscopic imaging in the pediatric emergency department (ED). Secondary objectives were to identify target age groups in which this technology is best utilized and evaluate the overall ease of use in this setting. ⋯ Fundoscopic images were consistently obtained using the Pan Optic iExaminer system in the pediatric ED particularly in children 2-18 years of age. CA images were obtained in children less than 2 years old, but less consistently.