Emergency medicine journal : EMJ
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Randomized Controlled Trial Multicenter Study
Prediction of unsuccessful treatment in patients with severe acute asthma.
Clinical assessment can be used to identify which patients with acute asthma are at risk of unsuccessful initial treatment. ⋯ PEFR, heart rate and other serious illnesses are the best predictors of unsuccessful treatment, but models based on these variables provide modest predictive value.
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Randomized Controlled Trial
Long-term pain prevalence and health-related quality of life outcomes for patients enrolled in a ketamine versus morphine for prehospital traumatic pain randomised controlled trial.
Improved early pain control may affect the longer-term prevalence of persistent pain. In a previous randomised, controlled trial, we found that the administration of ketamine on hospital arrival decreased pain scores to a greater extent than morphine alone in patients with prehospital traumatic pain. In this follow-up study, we sought to determine the prevalence of persistent pain and whether there were differences in patients who received ketamine or morphine. ⋯ There is a high incidence of persistent pain after traumatic injury, even in patients with relatively minor severity of injury. Although decreased pain scores at hospital arrival are achieved with ketamine compared with morphine, this difference does not affect the prevalence of persistent pain or health-related quality of life 6 months after injury. Further larger studies are required to confirm this finding.