European journal of emergency medicine : official journal of the European Society for Emergency Medicine
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Sepsis is a serious condition with high mortality. Early treatment improves outcome and can be initiated by emergency medical services (EMS) personnel.The primary aim of our study was to investigate how many sepsis patients are transported by EMS to the internist at the emergency department (ED). The secondary aims were to compare these EMS patients with patients who arrived at the ED otherwise and to investigate how these patients were managed. We further investigated how often the diagnosis sepsis/infection was documented by EMS. ⋯ Half of the patients with sepsis arrive at the ED by EMS. These patients are seriously ill, and although these patients are likely to benefit from early treatment, they are often transported with nonurgent rides and both assessment of vital signs and early start of treatment are not routinely performed.
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The aim of the present study is to describe the clinical and epidemiological characteristics, complications and outcome of patients with haemophilia and acute head injury (AHI) at the emergency department (ED), and develop a protocol to prevent early and late complications. This is a retrospective cohort study including all patients with haemophilia and AHI admitted to the ED. We identified 26 patients with AHI. ⋯ The discharge diagnosis was as follows: 3.8% subdural haematoma, 3.8% cerebellar epidural haematoma and 92.3% uncomplicated AHI. We propose the following protocol: a computed tomography scan upon arrival and another within 48 h post-AHI, unless there is an absence of clinical symptoms. In addition, all patients must self-administer a clotting factor as soon as possible and be observed in the ED for at least 48 h.
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Clinical Trial
Prehospital intranasal evaporative cooling for out-of-hospital cardiac arrest: a pilot, feasibility study.
Intranasal evaporative cooling presents a novel means of initiating therapeutic hypothermia after an out-of-hospital cardiac arrest (OHCA). Few studies have evaluated the use of intranasal therapeutic hypothermia using the Rhinochill device in the prehospital setting. We sought to evaluate the use of Rhinochill in the Physician Response Unit of London's Air Ambulance, aiming to describe the feasibility of employing it during prehospital resuscitation for OHCA. ⋯ Intranasal evaporative cooling using the Rhinochill system is feasible in an urban, prehospital, doctor/paramedic response unit. Cooling with Rhinochill was not found to interfere with prehospital resuscitation and resulted in significant core body temperature reduction. Further research on the potential benefit of intra-arrest and early initiation of intranasal evaporative cooling is warranted.
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Observational Study
The paediatric psychiatric emergency population in a university teaching hospital in Belgium (2003-2008).
In the last few decades, there has been a remarkable increase in the number of children and adolescents presenting with psychiatric complaints to the emergency department in the USA. In Europe, however, less is known about the paediatric psychiatric emergency population. This study provides a clinical and demographic profile of this population and its service use in a European context. ⋯ Patients were predominantly female (57.3%) and adolescent (83.3%) and mostly referred for hostility and violence towards others (18.5%) and suicidal ideation (17.8%). For about 1/4 of the patients, PES was the first ever mental health treatment contact. PES could serve as a place for early detection and intervention and as an entry point to mental health services.
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Cardiopulmonary resuscitation guidelines are constantly optimized to increase survival. Keeping hands-off time brief is vital. Our hypothesis is that rhythm recognition is time-consuming during cardiopulmonary resuscitation. ⋯ For all rhythms, the mean time was 4.0 s (95% CI: 3.5-4.5). Of all shockable rhythms, 95.2 % were correctly diagnosed as shockable, compared with 88.6 % of nonshockable rhythms being correctly diagnosed. Our simulation study indicates that doctors are able to correctly identify shockable rhythms within 4 s.