EM and ICU Literature Hit Parades

Let me tell you about an idea I had.

I wanted to take a survey of a bunch of the best emergency docs I know to compile a list of the 100 most important (for whatever reason) papers in the emergency medicine literature. Something akin to what James Austin has done with his fantastic intensive care medicine resources: The ICM Literature Hit Parade and The ‘B’ List — Discards from the ICM Literature Hit Parade.

However, I thought it would be better to go one step further. Wouldn’t it be great to provide a brief summary of each of the papers showing their strengths and weaknesses as well as why they were important when they were published, and why they are important now?  This was going to turn into something like the great book ‘Classic Papers in Critical Care‘ by Fink, Hayes and Soni… But for emergency medicine not just ICU. However, it was also going to be free online, accessible to anyone and constantly updated.

A week or two ago I read Michelle Lin’s blog post ‘Tricks of the Trade: Top 100 Papers in Emergency Medicine‘ on Academic Life in Emergency Medicine. The post features this interesting paper from the Western Journal of Emergency Medicine:

Druck J, Pearson D, Claud J. The Colorado Compendium: an article-based literature review program. West J Emerg Med. 2009 Feb;10(1):21-2. PMID: 19561763; PMCID: PMC2672292.

The abstract reads:

The immense body of knowledge that emergency medicine (EM) encompasses is constantly growing and ever changing. Textbooks build a strong foundation for the EM resident, but journal articles critical for modifying and improving EM practices are equally important for a well-rounded education. Determining which journal articles are vital to an EM residency education is a challenge. Lacking a formalized list of key articles available to EM residents and realizing that a list of articles without a guide may be difficult and confusing for novice readers, we created the “Colorado Compendium”: a recommended reading list, limited to 100 articles with accompanying summaries, tailored to emergency medicine residents.

Wow, this sounds great. If only they had the article summaries free online as an accessible guide to further reading… Wait a minute… They do! Click here to download the pdf! (Editor’s note: Or, even easier, get it off LITFL here).

The editors also plan to keep the list and summaries updated. A downside is that the first edition of the compendium is dated December 2006, so it is already 4 years behind the times. Also, the list seems to emphasise (non-systematic) review articles over original research and more evidence-based approaches. Be sure to let the editors know by email (compendium AT denverem.org) if you’d like to suggest new papers for inclusion in the next edition.

It seems there may still be room for an international, non-US version of the compendium, perhaps with a greater focus on original research. In the meantime, I’d like to congratulate the editors of the Colorado Compendium for their considerable efforts, and for making it accessible to anyone for free.