Tactical Medicine News Blog

I caught up with Dr. Anand Swaminathan, otherwise known as EM Swami, at The Teaching Course in NYC where he told his Best Case Ever from Janus General of his heroic and collaborative attempts at saving the life of a gentleman who presented to the ED with a classic story for a ruptured AAA. As William Olser famously said, "There is no disease more conducive to clinical humility than aneurysm of the aorta." The post Best Case Ever 43 Ruptured AAA appeared first on Emergency Medicine Cases.

Anterior dislocation of the mandible is a clinical scenario that is not infrequently encountered by the ED provider and requires prompt intervention. The classic technique for reduction of the mandible requires the provider to place his/her thumbs or fingers into the patient’s mouth along the lower molars and apply force inferiorly and posteriorly. However, this technique is fraught with difficulties and inefficiencies including the following:

The Case: A 5 year old girl presents to the ED with approximately 24 hours of suprapubic and RLQ abdominal pain. Vital signs are: Temp 38.2 C, HR 110, RR 19, BP 100/60, Oxygen Sat 100% on room air. She has vomited twice but has not had diarrhea. She had a history of constipation a year ago that has resolved and mother denies any urinary symptoms or history of UTI’s. The patient is quiet but nontoxic appearing. Your abdominal exam notes mild to moderate RLQ tenderness but no rebound and normal bowel sounds. You order a urinalysis, which is negative and a RLQ US which ‘does not visualize the appendix’. Your suspicion for possible appendicitis is still intermediate; however, now the patient states she is “a little hungry”. Should you order a CT of the abdomen and pelvis? Uuugh!

Background: Although non-contrast head CT (NCHCT) has near perfect sensitivity (98-100%) in detecting aneurysmal subarachnoid hemorrhage (SAH) when performed within 6 hours of headache onset, sensitivity declines after 6 hours. As a result of declining sensitivity, lumbar puncture (LP) continues to be part of the workup in suspected SAH. An LP gives providers the ability to perform CSF analysis for red blood cells and detect xanthochromia by visual inspection or spectrophotometry. In most of the world, including the United States, the predominant approach to identifying xanthochromia is visual detection. However, this technique is subjective and considered unreliable by many. Spectrophotometry is a more objective test but, has lower specificity, carries a higher cost and is unavailable in the majority of hospitals. In patients with SAH diagnosed by NCHCT or suspected based on LP results, angiography (CTA or MRA) is typically performed to investigate for an aneurysm that requires neurosurgical intervention. Angiography is considered to be the “gold standard” test for looking for aneurysmal SAH although it is not without it’s own limitations (a small minority of the population will have benign aneurysms and these increase with age).

Most people bring value to a community through their work and their ideas. It is the rare person who brings value by giving us a new perspective. This post is from such a person. Dr. Felix Ankel is Vice President, Health Professions Education at HealthPartners Institute and Assistant Dean at University of Minnesota Medical School. He has been a leader within the EM Education community through his national involvement and leadership in FOAMed. More than his accomplishments, he is best known for contributing to the EM education community as the resident philosopher and for his ability to bring a different perspective to any conversation. Hopefully this post will give you a taste of what we have all gained from him over the years.