The western journal of emergency medicine
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Clinical Trial
Improving door-to-balloon time by decreasing door-to-ECG time for walk-in STEMI patients.
The American Heart Association/American College of Cardiology guidelines recommend rapid door-to-electrocardiography (ECG) times for patients with ST-segment elevation myocardial infarction (STEMI). Previous quality improvement research at our institution revealed that we were not meeting this benchmark for walk-in STEMI patients. The objective is to investigate whether simple, directed changes in the emergency department (ED) triage process for potential cardiac patients could decrease door-to-ECG times and secondarily door-to-balloon times. ⋯ By creating a chief complaint-based cardiac triage protocol and by streamlining ECG completion, walk-in STEMI patients are systematically processed through the ED. This is not only associated with a decrease in door-to-balloon time, but also a decrease in the variability of the time sensitive intervals of door-to-ECG and ECG-to-balloon time.
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Historically, emergency department (ED) patients with pulmonary embolism (PE) have been admitted for several days of inpatient care. Growing evidence suggests that selected ED patients with PE can be safely discharged home after a short length of stay. However, the optimal timing of follow up is unknown. We hypothesized that higher-risk patients with short length of stay (<24 hours from ED registration) would more commonly receive expedited follow up (≤3 days). ⋯ Higher-risk patients with acute PE and short length of stay more commonly received expedited follow up in our community setting than other groups of patients. These practice patterns are associated with low rates of 30-day adverse events.
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Atrial fibrillation (AF) is the most common cardiac dysrhythmia. Current guidelines recommend obtaining thyroid-stimulating hormone (TSH) levels in all patients presenting with AF. Our aim was to investigate the utility of TSH levels for emergency department (ED) patients with a final diagnosis of AF while externally validating and potentially refining a clinical decision rule that recommends obtaining TSH levels only in patients with previous stroke, hypertension, or thyroid disease. ⋯ Low TSH in patients presenting to the ED with a final diagnosis of AF is rare (2%). The sensitivity of a clinical decision rule including a history of thyroid disease, hypertension, or stroke for identifying low TSH levels in patients presenting to the ED with a final diagnosis of atrial fibrillation was lower than originally reported (88.9% vs. 93%). When elevated TSH levels were included as an outcome, the sensitivity was reduced to 74.4%. We recommend that emergency medicine providers not routinely order TSH levels for all patients with a primary diagnosis of AF. Instead, these investigations can be limited to patients with new onset AF or those with a history of thyroid disease with no known TSH level within three months.
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Evaluation recommendations for patients on anticoagulant and antiplatelet (ACAP) therapy that present after mild traumatic brain injury (TBI) are controversial. At our institution, an initial noncontrast head computed tomography (HCT) is performed, with a subsequent HCT performed six hours later to exclude delayed intracranial hemorrhage (ICH). This study was performed to evaluate the yield and advisability of this approach. ⋯ Routine six-hour follow-up HCT is likely not indicated in patients on ACAP therapy, as our study suggests clinically significant delayed ICH does not occur. Additionally, presenting GCS deviation, LOC, neurological examination findings, clopidogrel, aspirin or combination regimen use may predict ICH, and, in the absence of these findings, HCT may potentially be forgone altogether.
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Practitioners need more information about intimate partner violence (IPV) victims' healthcare use trends. We used a novel data-linkage method and complaint categorization allowing us to evaluate IPV victims healthcare use trends compared to the date of their victimization. ⋯ IPV victims use the ED increasingly approaching their date of offense. Presenting complaints were varied and did not reveal unique identifiers of IPV victims. This novel method of database matching between claims data and government records has been shown to be a valid way to evaluate healthcare utilization of at-risk populations.