Welcome to the splendid 14th edition!
The LITFL Review is your regular and reliable source for the highest highlights, sneakiest sneak peaks and loudest shout-outs from the webbed world of emergency medicine and critical care. Each week the LITFL team will cast the spotlight on the best and brightest from the blogosphere, the podcast video/audiosphere and the rest of the Web 2.0 social media jungle.
The Most Fair Dinkum Ripper Beaut of the Week!
It’s tie this week between:
- The SMARTEMers take on Chest Pain Risk. Is risk stratification the emergency physiican’s best friend? What do you do with the mild-moderate risk chest pain patient sitting in your ED? The more you read, the more cofusing it gets. Could this podcast have the answer?
and:
- Joe Lex’s pick of the week is Patrick Croskerry: Clinical Decision Making in Emergency Medicine. By definition, anything by patient safety and clinical decision-making guru Pat Croskerry is a ripper!
The Usual Suspects
- K2, Spice, and the “new” marijuana sounds like a new girl pop band!
- Although a poorly written paper the authors do make one important point on Salicylate toxicity: the great masquerader.
- Deadly Medicine: the globalization of clinical research looks at the ethical dilemmas surrounding one of the great controversies in biomedical research.
- Video laryngoscope successes and failures: It gets you out of one hole —- and into another… the right one! At least, most of the time.
- More difficulties and complications occur for Emergency tracheal intubations outside the OR.
- Cardiac arrest drugs and pupils is this the reason’s ILCOR dropped Atropine from the guidelines?
- Norepinephrine increases preload doesn’t tell us much we didn’t already know, but passive leg raises continues to be a good predictor of preload responsiveness.
Academic Life in Emergency Medicine
- Reframing research on faculty development is an article review that provides pearls and pitfalls for improving research and faculty development.
- Trick of the Trade looks at Checking pupillary constriction with ultrasound.
- Paucis Verbis: highlights LITFL’s very own Ass-Prof Ercleve and his masterpiece, AMI and EKG Geography
- Avoiding Common Laryngoscopy Errors, Part II, covers tube delivery issues and the epiglottis-only view. This ongoing airway series by Rich Levitan is great reading.
- The Four A’s of EM? The proof is in the ultrasound probe.
- The Joy and Wonder of Prescription Drug Abuse, highlights one of the amny pleasures of working in the emergency department.
The Rest of the Best
- LITFL’s Oli Flower makes an effort to fill the gaping void in ICU podcasting with the first in a series of ICU podcasts on Intracerebral Haemorrhage, based on his recent review in Current Opinion in Critical Care.
- Want to know when to order Cranial CT for Minor Head Injury in paediatrics? Colin gives you some answers and a review of the clinical decision rules surrounding this.
- Looking to begin your academic career? Find out how to from some of The great Leaders in Emergency Medicine.
Amal Mattu’s pearl of the week look’s at polypharmacy in the elderly:
We already know that polypharmacy is a big issue in the elderly, but here are a few key points to keep in mind:
- Adverse drug effects are responsible for 11% of ED visits in the elderly.
- Almost 50% of all adverse drug effects in the elderly are accounted for by only 3 drug classes:
- Oral anticoagulant or anti-platelet agents
- Anti-diabetic agents
- Agents with narrow-therapeutic index (phenytoin, Digoxin)
- 1/3 of all adverse-effect-induced ED visits are accounted for by warfarin, insulin, and digoxin.
- Up to 20% of new prescriptions given to elderly ED patients represents a potential drug interaction.
The bottom line here is very simple-scrutinize that medication list and any new prescriptions in the elderly patient!
The Trauma Professional’s Blog
- When Is Drain Output Too Bloody? When the drain it-self is pulsating? Maybe not..
- EAST Guidelines Update: Liver Injury for a review on managing liver injuries.
- David catches up with some of the ED staff that recently helped-out in the Christchurch earthquake and Queensland floods. Find out the difficulties and challenges they faced during these tragic events.
- Want to know who the Top 10 Medical Tweeters are? Aaron has the answer for you….
- Remember to show some appreciation to your nurses with Note2Nurse2011.
- Learning the complex physiology of the cardiac cycle can be tedious. fortunately ImpactEDnurse has shown us the simplified cardiac cycle:
Twee-D and Twitical Care
A public health message from @MrSisterChris:
And @flobach sums up pre-hospital care:
News from the Fastlane
- The LITFL team is delving into the world of social medical research. Take our online survey that asks:
What (in your considered opinion) is the most appropriate treatment of Restless Legs Syndrome (RLS)?
The Final Words
- We owe respect to the living; to the dead we owe nothing but truth.’
— Volatire
- Quality is not an act, but a habit.”
— Aristotle
That’s it for now… Hopefully this roundup of the world of electronic emergency medicine and critical care education for everyone helps you to deal with anyone, anything, anywhere at anytime for at least another week!
If you’d like to suggest something for inclusion in the next edition of The LITFL Review, email our roving reporter:
kane AT lifeinthefastlane.com
About Kane Guthrie
[...] medicine decision making. Thanks to social media you get hear the gospel from the man himself. The LITFL Review 014 Patrick Croskerry: Clinical Decision Making in Emergency Medicine 11. ‘Peer Review is dead, long [...]