Acute dyspnea is a common Emergency Department complaint; in 2003 this chief complaint comprised about 3.5% of more than 115 million emergency department visits nationwide. A subset of these patients will present in respiratory distress, which is associated with increased morbidity and mortality. Often it can be hard to determine the exact etiology of the shortness of breath in a timely fashion,
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Background: Anaphylaxis is a condition that represents the best of Emergency Medicine: rapid onset of life-threatening symptoms that can be reversed with expeditious interventions. It is defined as the presence of any of the following:
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Bronchiolitis is the leading cause of hospitalizations among infants in the United States. Hospitalizations for this disease have increased and it has been hypothesized that reliance on oximetry values may be at least partly responsible for the increase. There is no absolute consensus on whether supplemental oxygen is required in patients with saturations between 90-95%.
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Injury is the leading cause of death in the United States in the 1 to 44 year old age group and the 3rd leading cause of death overall. In patients reaching the hospital with trauma, massive hemorrhage is a major cause of mortality. Damage control resuscitation (DCR) is a concept first put forward by the US Department of Defense in 2004 but has been widely adopted for civilian trauma as well.
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Sudden cardiac arrest is common and, obviously, very bad. In the US, there are about 500,000 cardiac arrests each year. About half of these cardiac arrests are out of hospital cardiac arrest (OHCA) and the survival rate is pretty poor. The most recent survival estimates put it at 7 – 9.5% in most communities.
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