Tactical Medicine News Blog

A 6-month-old male presents to the emergency department with diarrhea and vomiting. Despite antiemetic therapy, the the child is unable to tolerate oral intake in the ED and so you opt to admit him to the hospital for IV fluids.  The pediatric hospitalist requests that you write maintenance fluids prior to admission to the floor. Utilizing the 4-2-1 rule you calculate maintenance needs and choose D5 ½NS as your fluid. This is what you had been taught to utilize in children. It seems appropriate… but is it?

Turns out New Orleans is a fantastic city, not just for the food and culture, but also as a setting for the 25th anniversary year of the Council of Residency Directors Academic Assembly conference (CORD). The ALiEM crew was on hand to help teach a pre-conference workshop called #DontGetLeftBehind: FOAMed and Social Media for EM Educators, dedicated to learning tricks of the trade of the different modalities of social media for medical education. Naturally we focused our section on blogging. Rather than let all that information go to waste, we have shared our work in this post in the true spirit of collaboration! 

Fluoroquinolones are a widely used class of antibiotic that are effective in treating a wide variety of infections. Despite their popularity there is increasing concern regarding to the potential complications associated with these agents. In 2008, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) issued a black box warning involving fluoroquinolone use and an increased risk of tendon rupture. More recently in 2013 the FDA released another warning regarding the risk of peripheral neuropathy and required additional warnings to be added to the drug labels [1].

Abnormal vital signs are poor predictors of mortality associated with pulmonary embolism (PE).  Diagnosis of PE and right ventricular (RV) strain with transthoracic echocardiography (TTE) however, has been well documented as a predictor for pending shock and significant in-hospital mortality.  One study done by Grifoni S et al, showed that 10% of normotensive patients with PE and RV strain on echo developed PE related shock, and 3% died, whereas normotensive patients without signs of RV strain remained hemodynamically stable. 

As many know Free Open Access Med(ical Ed)ucation (FOAM) is a concept that was developed in June 2012 at a pub in Ireland. Since its creation FOAM has developed into a collection of constantly evolving, collaborative, and interactive resources and tools with one main objective…to make the world a better place. At the heart of FOAM is the philosophy that high-quality medical education should be free and accessible to all who care for patients and to those who teach the art and science of medicine. Recently, I watched a video from the 2013 Social Media And Critical Care (SMACC) Conference given by Joe Lex that made me realize although the acronym only came into being recently, maybe the concept had historical origins (From Hippocrates to Osler to FOAM).