Prehospital emergency care : official journal of the National Association of EMS Physicians and the National Association of State EMS Directors
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Background: Interfacility transport of laboring mothers is an infrequent endeavor associated with additional risk in the best of circumstances. Case Presentation: We report on a case where two laboring mothers were transported at night via fireboat, resulting in the delivery of one child while underway and delivery of another soon after arrival at the receiving facility. Conclusions: The objective of this case report is to describe the decision-making process and medical care for these two mothers during a nontraditional EMS transport.
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Case Reports
Prehospital Sinus Node Dysfunction and Asystole in a Previously Healthy Patient With COVID-19.
We report a case of a previously healthy 47-year-old female with syncope due to multiple episodes of nodal dysfunction and asystole. During these brief episodes, she was hypoxic in the mid-80's as a result of COVID-19 pneumonia. ⋯ As she recovered from COVID-19, no further episodes of bradycardia or bradyarrhythmia were noted. This case highlights a growing body of evidence that arrhythmias, specifically bradycardia, should be anticipated by prehospital providers as a potential cardiac complication of SARS-CoV-2 infection.
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Emergency ambulance service in Harlem, New York was studied to determine the degree to which misuse exists. Data were collected prospectively from a paramedic (ALS) ambulance and a basic life support (BLS) ambulance dispatched from Harlem Hospital. The results show that only 29.5% of the 136 calls dispatched to the ALS unit had congruent dispatch and actual priorities (r = 0.05), and only 59.6% of the 255 calls handled by both units were recommended for the unit with the proper level of the skill. 69.9% of calls assigned to the ALS unit were found not to need emergency transport (ET), the most common reason being the "unfounded" call, which represented 35.3% of the sample. ⋯ While the data are now historical, having been collected nearly 40 years ago, this research provides useful insights into current EMS initiatives, notably: (1) accuracy of assigned dispatch priority, (2) need for emergency transport to an emergency department, and (3) willingness of paramedics to refuse transport in cases where it is deemed unnecessary. The research questions represent many of the challenges that persist in today's EMS world with some being particularly relevant with the advent of Community Paramedicine. Emergency Ambulance Utilization in Harlem truly illustrates "what's old is new again!"
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Background: Getting effective fall prevention into the homes of medically and physically vulnerable individuals is a critical public health challenge. Community paramedicine is emerging globally as a new model of care that allows emergency medical service units to evaluate and treat patients in non-emergency contexts for prevention efforts and chronic care management. The promise of community paramedicine as a delivery system for fall prevention that scales to community-level improvements in outcomes is compelling but untested. ⋯ Results: Community paramedic home visits increased from 25 in 2017, to 236 in 2018, to 517 in 2019, indicating a large increase in the number of households that benefited from the efforts. A relative risk reduction of 0.66 (95% [CI] 0.53, 0.76) in the number of fall calls and 0.63 (95% [CI] 0.46, 0.75) in the number of fall-related calls resulting in transports to the hospital were observed. Conclusions: Community-FIT may offer a powerful mechanism for community paramedics to reduce fall-related 9-1-1 calls and transports to hospitals that can be implemented in emergency medical agencies across the country.
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Background: Intranasal (IN) midazolam allows for rapid, painless treatment of pediatric seizures in the prehospital setting and may be a preferred administration route if determined to be non-inferior to intravenous (IV) or intramuscular (IM) routes. We sought to evaluate the effectiveness of IN midazolam for terminating prehospital pediatric seizures compared to midazolam administered by alternate routes. Methods: We performed a retrospective, non-inferiority analysis using data from a regional Emergency Medical Services (EMS) database. ⋯ Midazolam redosing occurred in 116 patients (25%) who received IN midazolam versus 222 patients (14%) treated initially with midazolam via alternate routes (risk difference 11% [95%CI 7 - 15%]). The age-adjusted odds ratio for redosing midazolam after intranasal administration compared to alternate route administration was 2.0 (95% CI 1.6 - 2.6). Conclusion: Prehospital treatment of pediatric seizure with intranasal midazolam was associated with increased frequency of redosing compared to midazolam administered by other routes, suggesting that 0.1 mg/kg is a subtherapeutic dose for intranasal midazolam administration.