Tactical Medicine News Blog

Patients presenting to the ED with respiratory distress and a tracheostomy can unnerve almost any provider, and management is often fraught with preventable errors.1,2 This recognition has led to the development of treatment algorithms from groups including the U.K. National Tracheostomy Safety Project to improve the safety and quality of care for patients with tracheostomies.3 Use the ABC-Ts mnemonic to help you perform a focused tracheostomy evaluation and troubleshoot in a stepwise, systematic manner while waiting for your ENT consultant to arrive.

We see patients with toxic alcohol poisoning most commonly in three clinical scenarios. One, after an intentional suicide attempt where they tell you exactly what they took; two, when they come in agitated and won’t give you a history and the three, the inebriated patient found down. Alcohol is everywhere, and inevitably inebriated people show up at your ED with a myriad of medical and psychiatric problems. It’s our job as ED professionals, not only to identify traumatic, medical and psychiatric catastrophes in these patients but also to identify and manage the relatively rare but potentially life and sight threatening toxicologic diagnoses in the inebriated or agitated patient. And that isn’t so easy - especially when it comes to toxic alcohols. In this episode we help give you the knowledge of toxic alcohol poisoning recognition, clinical and lab clues, limitations of the osmolar gap, goals of management, time sensitive treatments and more... The post Ep 106 Toxic Alcohols – Minding the Gaps appeared first on Emergency Medicine Cases.

We see patients with toxic alcohol poisoning most commonly in three clinical scenarios. One, after an intentional suicide attempt where they tell you exactly what they took; two, when they come in agitated and won’t give you a history and the three, the inebriated patient found down. Alcohol is everywhere, and inevitably inebriated people show up at your ED with a myriad of medical and psychiatric problems. It’s our job as ED professionals, not only to identify traumatic, medical and psychiatric catastrophes in these patients but also to identify and manage the relatively rare but potentially life and sight threatening toxicologic diagnoses in the inebriated or agitated patient. And that isn’t so easy - especially when it comes to toxic alcohols. In this episode we help give you the knowledge of toxic alcohol poisoning recognition, clinical and lab clues, limitations of the osmolar gap, goals of management, time sensitive treatments and more... The post Ep 106 Toxic Alcohols – Minding the Gaps appeared first on Emergency Medicine Cases.

Background: Post-cardiac arrest patients are among the sickest groups of patients seen in the Emergency Department. They are difficult to study, which leads to endless questions about how to best care for them. Below we address the available evidence on four of these controversies: oxygen therapy, hemodynamic management, cardiac catheterization and head CT. We recognize the limitations to the available data and attempt to offer the best recommendations we can.

There is significant overlap among conditions that cause a red, painful, or red AND painful eye. Having trouble keeping them all straight? Need a refresher before heading in to see a patient with a new eye complaint? Check out our brief, practical ALiEM Cards on the topic: The Painful Eye (Author: Puja Gopal, MD) The Red Eye (Author: Michelle Lin, MD) Eye Differential Diagnoses (Author: Puja Gopal, MD)