Within the US, chest pain is the most common etiology for observation and short inpatient stays. Patients are admitted to assess for the presence of serious pathology including acute coronary syndrome (ACS).
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Tagged ‘Cardiology’
Journal Review
Impact of Disposition on Outcomes and Utilization on ED Chest Pain Patients
Journal Review
Value of EKG Machine Interpretation
The Emergency Department, by its nature, is interruption driven given it is “uncontrolled and unpredictable and punctuated by intermittent time-critical activities (Chisholm 2000). On average, each Emergency Physician is interrupted 6.6 times per hour while at work;
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Journal Review
30-Day Outcomes After Aggressive AF Management in the ED
Atrial fibrillation (AF) is one of the most common dysrhythmias encountered in the ED. The management of recent-onset AF and atrial flutter (AFl) in the ED continues to be debated.
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Core
Pericarditis
This post reviews the diagnosis and management of pericarditis with a focus on not missing the hidden STEMI.
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Journal Review
Validation of the Modified Sgarbossa Criteria
It has been recognized since the 1940s that the presence of a Left Bundle Branch Block (LBBB) obscures the EKG diagnosis of myocardial infarction (MI). The publication of the Sgarbossa criteria in 1996 aided in clarifying this issue.
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Journal Review
Procainamide vs Amiodarone in Stable Wide QRS Tachydysrhythmias (PROCAMIO)
The current ACLS guidelines give both procainamide and amiodarone a class II recommendation as chemical therapy for the treatment of patients with stable ventricular tachycardia. Despite the fact that one drug does not appear to have an advantage over the other based on available literature,
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