Articles: adult.
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Needle decompression of a tension pneumothorax can be a lifesaving procedure. It requires an adequate needle length to reach the chest wall to rapidly remove air. With adult obesity exceeding one third of the United States population in 2010, we sought to evaluate the proper catheter length that may result in a successful needle decompression procedure. Advance Trauma Life Support (ATLS) currently recommends a 51 millimeter (mm) needle, while the needles stocked in our emergency department are 46 mm. Given the obesity rates of our patient population, we hypothesize these needles would not have a tolerable success rate of 90%. ⋯ Use of longer length needles for needle thoracostomy is essential given the extent of the nation's adult obesity population.
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Children have better outcomes after out-of-hospital cardiac arrest (OHCA) than adults. However, little is known about the difference in outcomes between children and adults after OHCA due to drowning. ⋯ In this large OHCA registry, children had better one-month survival rates after OHCA due to drowning compared with adults. Most survivors in all groups had unfavorable neurological outcomes.
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Established guidelines and standardized protocols exist to assist clinicians in effectively addressing disease-related malnutrition in hospitalized adults. The goals of this treatment vary according to the disease state and the severity of the malnutrition. In starvation-related malnutrition, the goal of nutrition therapy is to restore healthy levels of lean body mass and body fat. ⋯ When addressing malnutrition in hospitalized patients, oral feeding through diet enrichment or oral nutrition supplementation (ONS) is the first line of defense. ONS has consistently been demonstrated to provide nutrition, clinical, functional, and economic benefits to malnourished patients in both individual trials and meta-analyses. In an era when the cost of healthcare is rising as the population ages, addressing malnutrition in hospitalized patients is an important priority.
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Epilepsy & behavior : E&B · Nov 2013
Age-specific periictal electroclinical features of generalized tonic-clonic seizures and potential risk of sudden unexpected death in epilepsy (SUDEP).
Generalized tonic-clonic seizure (GTCS) is the commonest seizure type associated with sudden unexpected death in epilepsy (SUDEP). This study examined the semiological and electroencephalographic differences (EEG) in the GTCSs of adults as compared with those of children. The rationale lies on epidemiological observations that have noted a tenfold higher incidence of SUDEP in adults. ⋯ Root mean square successive difference was negatively correlated with PGES duration (longer PGES durations were associated with decreased vagally mediated heart rate variability; p<0.05) but not with tonic phase duration. This study clearly points out identifiable electroclinical differences between adult and pediatric GTCSs that may be relevant in explaining lower SUDEP risk in children. The findings suggest that some prolonged seizure phases and prolonged PGES duration may be electroclinical markers of SUDEP risk and merit further study.