Articles: emergency-department.
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Pituitary apoplexy is an uncommon but life-threatening condition that is often overlooked and underdiagnosed. We report a 45-year-old man who presented to our emergency department with a sudden onset headache, acute confusion, signs of meningeal irritation and ophthalmoplegia. An initial diagnosis of acute meningoencephalitis was made, which was amended to pituitary apoplexy following thorough investigation within the emergency department. ⋯ Formal visual field assessment demonstrated temporal visual field loss in the left eye. The patient was discharged to his usual residence a week later and follow-up was organised with both the endocrinologists and ophthalmologists. Follow-up MRI demonstrated that there was no significant change in either size or signal characteristics of the pituitary fossa mass (Figure 1B).
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J Emerg Trauma Shock · Oct 2011
Diagnostic accuracy of bedside emergency ultrasound screening for fractures in pediatric trauma patients.
Bedside ultrasound (BUS) can effectively identify fractures in the emergency department (ED). ⋯ BUS can be utilized by emergency physicians after brief training to accurately identify long bone fractures in the pediatric age-group.
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Prehosp Disaster Med · Aug 2011
ReviewFebruary 2009 airplane crash at amsterdam schiphol airport: an overview of injuries and patient distribution.
The objective of this study was to describe the injuries and distribution of casualties resulting from the crash of Turkish Airlines flight TK 1951 near Schiphol Airport in the Netherlands on 25 of February 2009. ⋯ Although the accident was in an urban area, there was a significant delay between the time of the accident and the arrival of the casualties at hospital emergency departments. The Turkish Airlines crash provides extensive information for research into mass-casualty or disaster management, triage, plane crash injuries, and survivability. The "Medical Research Turkish Airlines Crash" (MOTAC) study group currently is investigating several of these issues.
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Perimortem caesarean section is an ethically difficult decision for emergency medicine resuscitation teams. A 34-years-old woman was attacked by her husband with a gunshot. At the time arrival to the emergency room, there was no pulse, no spontaneous breath and blood pressure was unobtainable. ⋯ During the cardiopulmonary resuscitation efforts, an abdominal ultrasonography was performed and revealed a fetal heart rate with bradycardia. Low segment caesarean section was performed by the obstetrician in the resuscitation room and a female newborn was delivered within less than one minute of the skin incision. Decision on terminating the CPR efforts should not be made in maternal cardiac arrests older than 28 weeks' gestational age, unless the viability of the fetus had been evaluated.
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J Prim Care Community Health · Jul 2011
The evaluation of electrocardiogram findings in acute abdominal pain patients admitted to the emergency department.
The aim of this study was to determine the diagnostic value of electrocardiogram in differential diagnosis of patients with nonspecific abdominal pain. This prospective observational study was conducted in a university emergency department over 2 weeks. One hundred twenty patients with complaints of abdominal pain were admitted to the emergency department. ⋯ The examination indicated that 38 (31.7%) patients with abdominal pain showed cardiac pathologies on their electrocardiograms; 3 (2.5%) patients with abdominal pain admitted to cardiology service had ST elevation, and 2 (1.6%) had electrocardiogram depression on their electrocardiograms. According to the results, the authors claim that the electrocardiogram played an important role in the treatment and diagnosis of patients presenting with abdominal pain in emergency medicine. For this reason, it was thought that emergency medicine specialists should understand the basis of the perception of abdominal pain and develop a focused approach to the initial evaluation of these patients.