Tactical Medicine News Blog

When would you obtain a CT for a pediatric patient who sustained a head injury? Watch this nice 11-minute video review by Dr. Raul Patwari, discussing the 2009 Lancet PECARN study.    

Many of our childhood memories revolve around late nights playing Mario Brothers. Everybody remembers their mother yelling to stop playing so much, or else their fingers would fall off. Many of us outgrew video games, only to be sucked back in by Angry Birds and Farmville. Now there’s a new generation who experience life with an iPad glued to their hand from the womb. And then there are people like my fiance who belong to guilds in World of Warcraft. For the purposes of this write up, I want to focus on Serious Games as electronic software as opposed to table top or board games such as Monopoly (or Dungeons and Dragons for the geeks out there!).

Sometimes a question is posed on Twitter that generates a great discussion from colleagues ’round the globe. Such was the case for dexmedetomidine. Although benzodiazepines remain the standard of treatment for ethanol withdrawal, particularly seizures and delirium tremens, what’s all the hype about dexmedetomidine?

In line with the philosophy and awesomeness of FOAM, Dr. Almero Oosthuizen and the EM Physicians at Cape Town South Africa have created the EM Cape Town YouTube Channel for the purposes of demonstrating critical EM procedures. This great series was created with zero budget, limited time, and only with the use of an iPhone for recording purposes. This group is very passionate about teaching, and it shows through the videos.

  An IV drug user accidentally breaks off a 25-gauge needle in his/her forearm and presents to your ED for needle foreign body removal. How can you minimize the degree of trauma to the patient? How can you minimize the number of incisions made in order to find and remove this “needle in a haystack”?