Recent years have seen a paradigm shift in cardiac arrest from the traditional mantra of airway, breathing circulation (ABC’s) to circulation, airway, breathing (CAB). This change represents the understanding that circulation is of paramount importance and thus, advanced airway management has been de-emphasized. This change is rational as the only interventions that have been shown to be beneficial in cardiac arrest are high-quality CPR and defibrillation.
Read More
Core Content edited by
Journal Review
The Role of Intubation in In-Hospital Cardiac Arrest
Core
Amiodarone is Dead
This post discusses the lack of evidence for the use of amiodarone in atrial fibrillation, ventricular tachycardia and cardiac arrest.
Read More
Post
Post It Pearls 10.0
Teaching on a clinical shift can sometimes be difficult: it’s busy, everyone’s running around and it’s hard to capture a trainees attention. Recently, on twitter, Amal Mattu (@amalmattu) has been posting pictures of his white board teaching: discrete pearls written down and shared with anyone who walks by. The pearls are often prompted by patients presenting during that shift but they don’t have to be.
Read More
Journal Review
Icatibant Doesn’t Improve Outcomes in ACE-I Inuduced Angioedema
Angiotensin Converting Enzyme Inhibitors (ACE-I) are prescribed to millions of patients in the US. Though they are relatively safe, upper airway angioedema is one of the life-threatening adverse effects that we see frequently in the Emergency Department. Though this disorder is routinely treated with medications for anaphylaxis (i.e. epinephrine, histamine blockers, corticosteroids) the underlying mechanism of action predicts that these medications will fail.
Read More
Journal Review
Effect of Listing Test Prices in the EMR
In the US, vast differences in pricing exist for the same medical services across the country, with no correlation shown between price and quality (Sinaiko 2017). Previous studies on price transparency in medicine have shown that many patients would like to know “the price of medical services in advance and are willing to look for ‘better-value care’” (Sinaiko 2017).
Read More
Core
Acute Rhinosinusitis
This post dives into acute rhinosinusitis with a focus on clinical identification and determining the benefits of antibiotic therapy.
Read More