Tactical Medicine News Blog

When talking about Out of Hospital Cardiac Arrest (OHCA) there are really only three things that make a true difference on outcomes (i.e. survival and neurologic function): High quality, non-interrupted CPR Early defibrillation Therapeutic hypothermia The quality of CPR is often under appreciated and performed incorrectly (too slow and/or not hard enough).  With mechanical CPR, chest compressions are delivered uninterrupted and at a predefined depth and rate. In my own practice I have seen these devices being used more and more, but my questions is do these devices impact outcomes?

You have a patient with an anion gap of 30 and bicarbonate of 10 mEq/L. You also determine on VBG that the patient’s pCO2 is 25 mmHg. What trick of the trade can you use to quickly determine whether this low pCO2 is an appropriate compensation of the primary metabolic acidosis? Dr. Jeremy Faust and Dr. Corey Slovis explains the quick “Rule of 15”.

Dr. Rahul Patwari is a one-man statistics teaching machine. In part 4 of this Evidence Based Medicine series, he reviews advance concepts in statistics and calculations including: case-fatality rates, crude mortality rates, specific-mortality rates, years of potential life lost, and direct and indirect age adjustments.

Coincidence can be very fortuitous. How exciting was it to have Shawn Achor deliver his keynote address about the Happiness Advantage at ACEP this past week? Three days after our Book Club Review was released? Best part of it all – none of it was planned. That definitely was a ‘happy coincidence’. :D Though I was not there, my Twitter feed lit up with Happiness resounding from ACEP on that first day. It seems his message resounded with many in the audience.

Dr. Jeremy Faust is back with another P-video, which stands for Paucis Videos (paucis means “few” or “brief” in Latin) much like the Paucis Verbis cards. These P-videos are short video-based educational pearls for the practicing physician with a focus on Emergency Medicine and Critical Care. Here Jeremy shares two mnemonics, LUCAS and FEBRILE, to help you remember the common causes for fevers in pediatric and adult patients, respectively.