Scand J Trauma Resus
-
Scand J Trauma Resus · Jan 2009
Critical care in the emergency department: an assessment of the length of stay and invasive procedures performed on critically ill ED patients.
Critically ill patients commonly present to the ED and require aggressive resuscitation. Patient transfer to an ICU environment in an expedient manner is considered optimal care. However, this patient population may remain in the ED for prolonged periods of time. The goal of this study is to describe the ED length of stay, and the invasive procedures performed in critically ill ED patients. ⋯ Critically ill patients are managed in the emergency department for a significant length of time. Although the majority of airway intervention occurs in the prehospital setting and ED, relatively few patients undergo invasive procedures while in the emergency department.
-
Therapeutic hypothermia (TH) in unconscious survivors of out-of-hospital cardiac arrest (OHCA) is now a well-documented part of post-resuscitation care. Implementation of TH into daily clinical practice has been far more successful in the Scandinavian countries than in the rest of the world. Still, many questions remain. One of them is whether prehospital cooling will result in better outcomes.