Academic emergency medicine : official journal of the Society for Academic Emergency Medicine
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Randomized Controlled Trial
A randomized, noninferiority, controlled trial of two doses of intravenous subdissociative ketamine for analgesia in the emergency department.
This study aimed to determine if 0.15 mg/kg intravenous (IV) subdissociative ketamine is noninferior to 0.3 mg/kg in emergency department (ED) patients with acute pain. ⋯ Our data did not detect a large difference in analgesia or adverse effect profile between 0.15 mg/kg IV ketamine and 0.30 mg/kg in the short-term treatment of acute pain in the ED.
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Pneumonia, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), and heart failure (HF) exacerbations can present similarly in the older adult in the Emergency Department (ED), leading to sub-optimal treatment from over- and under-diagnosis. There may be a role for antimicrobial peptides (AMPs) in improving the accurate diagnosis of pneumonia in these patients. ⋯ Emergency physicians continue to have poor diagnostic accuracy in dyspneic older adult patients. Serum AMP levels are one potential tool to improve diagnostic accuracy and outcomes for this important population and require further study.
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The validated Pediatric Emergency Care Applied Research Network (PECARN) prediction rules are meant to aid clinicians in safely reducing unwarranted imaging in children with minor head injuries (MHI). Even so, computed tomography (CT) scan utilization remains high, especially in intermediate-risk (per PECARN) MHI patients. The primary objective of this quality improvement initiative was to reduce CT utilization rates in the intermediate-risk MHI patients. ⋯ Our multifaceted quality improvement initiative was both safe and effective in reducing our CT utilization rates in children with intermediate-risk MHI.