Articles: emergency-medical-services.
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Emerg Med Australas · Aug 2023
ReviewReview article: Prehospital telehealth for emergency care: A scoping review.
Telehealth has been successfully implemented in the prehospital setting to expedite emergency care, although applications are still in their infancy. With recent advances in technologies, it is not described how prehospital telehealth has evolved over the past decade. This scoping review aimed to answer the research question 'what telehealth platforms have been used to facilitate communication between prehospital healthcare providers and emergency clinicians in the past decade?'. ⋯ Challenges to telehealth involved technical, clinical and organisational issues. Few facilitators of prehospital telehealth were identified. Telehealth platforms to facilitate prehospital to ED communication continue to develop but require technological advances and improved network connectivity to support implementation in the prehospital environment.
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Studies of outcome differences by sex in out-of-hospital cardiac arrest (OHCA) have produced mixed results that may depend on age, a potential surrogate for menopausal status. ⋯ Women <55 years were more likely to survive than men <55 years following VF-OHCA. The biologic mechanism represented by VF waveform mediated some, though not all, of the outcome difference.
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We aimed to evaluate the duration and frequency of communication between EMS (Emergency Medical Services) and ED (Emergency Department) staff during handoff and the subsequent time to critical cardiac care (rhythm determination, defibrillation) using CA (cardiac arrest) video review. ⋯ There is no standardization for handoff reports from EMS to ED staff for CA patients. Using video review, we demonstrated the variable communication during handoff. Improvements to this process could reduce the time to critical cardiac care interventions.
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Ankle injuries are one of the most common presentations in the ED. Although fractures can be ruled out using the Ottawa Ankle Rules, the specificity is low, which means many patients may still receive unnecessary radiographs. Even once fractures are ruled out, assessment of ankle stability is recommended to rule out ruptures, but the anterior drawer test has only moderate sensitivity and low specificity and should be performed only after swelling has receded. Ultrasound could be a reliable, cheap and radiation free alternative to diagnose fractures and ligamentous injuries. The purpose of this systematic review was to investigate the accuracy of ultrasound in diagnosing ankle injuries. ⋯ CRD42020215258.