Articles: emergency-medical-services.
-
Pediatric emergency care · Aug 2023
Adolescent and Caregiver Perspectives on Living With a Limb Fracture: A Qualitative Study.
Fractures occur in up to half of children by age 16 years. After initial emergency care for a fracture, function is universally impaired in children, and impacts extend to the immediate family. Knowledge of expected functional limitations is key to providing proper discharge instructions and anticipatory guidance to families. ⋯ Overall, caregivers' perspectives were congruent with the self-described experiences of adolescents. Key messages for optimized discharge instructions include pain and sleep management, allowing extra time to complete tasks independently, considering impact on siblings, preparing for changes in activities and social dynamics, and normalizing frustration. These themes highlight an opportunity to better tailor discharge instructions for adolescents with fractures.
-
Eur J Trauma Emerg Surg · Aug 2023
The potential of point-of-care diagnostics to optimise prehospital trauma triage: a systematic review of literature.
In the prehospital care of potentially seriously injured patients resource allocation adapted to injury severity (triage) is a challenging. Insufficiently specified triage algorithms lead to the unnecessary activation of a trauma team (over-triage), resulting in ineffective consumption of economic and human resources. A prehospital trauma triage algorithm must reliably identify a patient bleeding or suffering from significant brain injuries. By supplementing the prehospital triage algorithm with in-hospital established point-of-care (POC) tools the sensitivity of the prehospital triage is potentially increased. Possible POC tools are lactate measurement and sonography of the thorax, the abdomen and the vena cava, the sonographic intracranial pressure measurement and the capnometry in the spontaneously breathing patient. The aim of this review was to assess the potential and to determine diagnostic cut-off values of selected instrument-based POC tools and the integration of these findings into a modified ABCDE based triage algorithm. ⋯ A preliminary version of a modified triage algorithm with hypothetic cut-off values for a trauma team activation was created. However, further studies should be conducted to optimize the final cut-off values in the future. Furthermore, studies need to evaluate the practical application of the modified algorithm in terms of feasibility (e.g. duration of application, technique, etc.) and the effects of the new algorithm on over-triage. Limiting factors are the restriction with the search and the heterogeneity between the studies (e.g. varying measurement devices, techniques etc.).
-
Pediatric emergency care · Aug 2023
Observational StudyThe Impact of an Emergency Department Bruising Pathway on Disparities in Child Abuse Evaluation.
Previous research has shown racial, ethnic, and socioeconomic disparities in provider medical evaluations and reporting to child protective services (CPS) and law enforcement (LE) for cases of suspected child physical abuse. Our hospital standardized evaluation and reporting of high-risk bruising using a clinical pathway. We aimed to assess whether standardization impacted disparity. ⋯ A standardized clinical pathway for identification and evaluation of high-risk bruising may help to decrease socioeconomic disparities in reporting high-risk bruising. Larger studies are needed to fully evaluate disparities in assessment and reporting of child abuse.
-
Observational Study
Influence of donor capnometry on renal graft evolution in uncontrolled donation after circulatory death.
To analyse the association between donor capnometry data and the short-term evolution of kidney grafts in cases of uncontrolled donation after circulatory death (uDCD). ⋯ Capnometry levels at transfer are a useful predictor of the short-term function and viability of kidney transplants from uncontrolled donations after circulatory death.
-
To investigate the ability of Swedish Emergency Medical Dispatch Centres (EMDCs) to answer medical emergency calls and dispatch an ambulance for out-of-hospital cardiac arrest (OHCA) in accordance with the American Heart Association (AHA) performance goals in a 1-step (call connected directly to the EMDC) and a 2-step (call transferred to regional EMDC) procedure over 10 years, and to assess whether delays may be associated with 30-day survival. ⋯ The majority of calls were answered within the AHA performance goals. When an ambulance was dispatched within the AHA high-performance standard in response to OHCA calls, survival was higher compared with calls when dispatch was delayed.