Welcome to the profound 73rd 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 casts 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 to find the most fantastic EM/CC FOAM (Free Open Access Meducation) around.
Time to warm up to this weeks review with a bit of ZDogg MD!
The Most Fair Dinkum Ripper Beaut of the Week
- This weeks ripper is taken out by one of EMCC’s newest and most dominating podcasters and LITFL old boy, Minh Le Cong of the PHARM blog. This week he teams up up with paediatric EM doctor Natalie May from the UK to discuss Recognising life threatening paediatric illness. The podcast goes through the approach Natalie use’s in assessing the sick child, walks us through 3 cases and finishes off with a discussion on the use of intraosseous access in the paediatric patient.
Also worth listening too is:
- ECMO Retrievals with Dr Anne Creaton - discusses the issues and logistics of providing ECMO in the retrieval environment. Great podcast.
The LITFL Review Top Picks
- The LITFL Review made its own pick of the week from Free Emergency Medicine Talks this week, mainly because the top talk is by Joe Lex himself (aka emergency medicine’s finest historian and speaker). He gave a talk last week in New York on International EM Education Efforts & E-Learning an absolutely terrific talk on the subject… He even uses our favorite acronym ‘FOAM’ – who says our elders are slow on the uptake!?
- The Clark Kent of emergency medicine is back! That’s right David Newman takes a deep dive review into two of hottest published studies that will affect emergency medicine at present . Check out SMART Coronary CT: The Latest and Greatest - A must listen to.
- Andy points out that the organisers of ICEM 2012 have just uploaded the Slides and Videos of #ICEM2012 talks online - that’s what FOAM is all about.
The Trauma Professional’s Blog
- How To Read A Stab Wound… The reading part is easy its the documentation part that gets tricky!
- FOAM(e) IS GOOD FOR YOU! - nice presentation and links that show us what FOAM is all about, and the amazing benefits you can gain from it.
- Its back… thank goodnes … another episode of Tox Talk is out. In Organophosphates we learn about poisoning from insecticides and nerve agents, and what to you when your patients are in the poo because of them.
- Case Report: fatal GI bleed 6 days after one dose of dabigatran (Pradaxa) – although I’m slightly skeptical that a single dose could cause this, it reminds us to monitor the renal function on patients taking this drug.
- Empiric hydroxocobalamin for smoke inhalation: what’s the cost? where’s the evidence? Bottom line: not a lot of evidence to support a benefit, a high cost to provide and supply the drug to both ED and pre-hospital personel… perhaps more of a benefit mainly to the drug company than patients?
- Is hemodialysis effective in thallium poisoning? Yes if started early…..Not like in this case!
- IV Lipid Emulsion for Cardiotoxic Ingestion - Do you intend to use Intralipid in these patients? Not the best paperever but the drug does show promising results.
- Epi is Good in Arrest…This Week - well retrospectively it gives better neurological outcomes.
- Chris presents Ten Mattuisms on ED Teaching – this is a collection of pearls and pitfalls from an excellent talk that master EM educator Amal Mattu gave a while back. (Check out the link in the post to listen to the talk).
- Educational Tech Commandments - Mike highlights an ingenious TED talk from teacher/educator Adam Bellow on the technological transformation and social media revolution that is taking place in education – a truly awe inspiring talk.
- Rick Body’s Cardiology Case 1 and its a tricky one! As Rick says “our patients don’t read the textbooks do they?”
- Steve launches his boot-camp for understanding the emergency medicine literature, and starts with a bang in The Rivers Sepsis Study. Looking forward to watching this develop Steve.
- Peeing into the wind? Urine drug screens, part 1 (benzodiazepines) - not as helpful as psychiatry think they are!
- Trick of the Trade: Alternative to Word catheter for Bartholin abscess - a new trick/approach to packing these tricky abscess!
- Intensive Blood Pressure Control in ICH - still no definitive answer on how to manage the BP in these patients with ICH – lets hope INTERACT2 gives us the answer.
- Head to Head With Head CT Rules - The most striking thing about this article, however, remains the disappointing number of false positives generated by each of these head CT decision rules.
- Not all ST elevation is STEMI - can you work out the cause for the ST-elevation? Nice case Domhnall!
- Ultra-sounds like pneumonia to me - the probe is the new CXR for diagnosing pneumonia – actually its better than the CXR!
- Its not easy being a rural doc, not always having access to radiology department or to labs, but with the use of a probe and a bit of training in ultrasound the job becomes a whole lot easier as Casey illustrates with this brilliant case -Um-bil-obstruction.
- Pericarditis, or Anterior STEMI? The QRS proves it. A tip from Dr Smith: The QRS is at least as important as the ST segment in diagnosing STEMI.
- Antithrombotic Therapy and Prevention of Thrombosis – Scott gets us up-to-date with the latest evidence published on managing and preventing thrombosis in your patients from the critically ill all the way through to managing in AF and the treatment of DVT.
- Another pearl from Ioana, this one on Splenic artery aneurysms - it is the only aneurysms that are more common in women – 4:1 female:male ratio, and 2% result in life-threatening haemorrhage secondary to rupture!
- Late presentations “Hard Bastard” - Working in remote areas really does highlight how resilient these patients are at times….This case is the perfect example.
The LITFL Review Shout Out of the Week
- The Andy and Amit team are after you. That’s right they want your opinion/thoughts on what your trauma education needs are? Take the survey here and let the lads know exactly what you are looking for in trauma education.
Twee Dee and Twitical Care
News from the Fastlane
- Mike’s been busy again doing a bit of research look at the EMCC blogging world in FOAM EMCC Bloggers. Did you know EMCC blogs and podcasts have grown from 67 to 130 over the past 18 months – awesome!
- Another challenging clinical image from Chris in Rorschach Test Or Diagnostic Image?
- Chris’s Clinical Examination Video Database is now online… Guaranteed to have you dominating your next exam.
The Final Words
- “This website is like bats piss - shines like gold when all around is dark.”
— Casey Parker on iTeachEM.net
- “Not doing anything with your potential is the same as not having any.”
— Anonymous
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 kane AT lifeinthefastlane.com
LITFL Review EM/CC Educational Social Media Round Up
Emergency Medicine and Critical Care Blogroll
Emergency Medicine and Critical Care Podcasts
123Sonography.com — Academic Life in Emergency Medicine — Adventure Medicine— A Life at Risk — All LA Conference — Al Sacchetti’s Youtube — Bedside Ultrasound — Better in Emergency Medicine — Broome Docs — CCM-L.org — CLIC-EM — Critical Care Perspectives in EM — Dave on Airways —DrGDH — Dr Smith’s ECG Blog — ECG Academy — ECG Guru — ECG of the Week—ED Exam — EDTCC — EKG Videos — EM Basic — EM Core Content — EMCrit — Emergency Medical Abstracts —EMERJENCYWEBB –EmergencyLondon — Emergency Medicine Cases — Emergency Medicine Education — Emergency Medicine News — Emergency Medicine Ireland — Emergency Medicine Tutorials—Emergency Medicine Updates —Emergucate —EM Literature of Note — empem.org — EMpills — Emergency Physicians Monthly — EM Lyceum — EMProcedures — EMRAP — EMRAP: Educators’ Edition — EMRAP.TV — EM REMS — ER CAST — Free Emergency Medicine Talks — GMEP — Gmergency! — Greater Sydney Area HEMS — HQmeded.com — ICU Rounds — Impactednurse — Intensive Care Network —iTeachEM - keepcaring — Keeping Up With Emergency Medicine — KeeWeeDoc — KI Docs — LipheLongLurnERdok — MDaware — MD+ CALC — MedEDMasters — Medical Education Videos — Medicina d’urgenza — Medicine for the Outdoors — Micrognome — Movin’ Meat — Neurointensive Care — Pediatric EM Morsels — PEM ED — PEMLit — PHARM — Practical Evidence — Priceless Electrical Activity — Procedurettes — PulmCCM.org — Radiology Signs — Radiopaedia — Resus.com.au — Resus.ME — RESUS Room — Richard Winters’ Physician Leadership —ruralflyingdoc — SCANCRIT — SCCM Blogs — SCCM Podcast — SEMEP — SinaiEM — SinaiEM Ultrasound — SMART EM — SonoSpot — StEmylns — Takeokun — thebluntdissection—The Central Line — The Ember Project —The Emergency Medicine Resident Blog — The NNT — The Poison Review — The Sharp End — The Short Coat —The Skeptics Guide to Emergency Medicine — The Sono Cave - The Trauma Professional’s Blog — underneathEM.com — ToxTalk — TJdogma — Twin Cities Toxicology — Ultrarounds — UMEM Educational Pearls — Ultrasound Village
About Kane Guthrie
I’m flattered that you bypassed my pick of the week (Art Kellermann -- Emergency Medicine and Global Health -- http://wp.me/pR3VZ-2eh) and chose my talk. I’m still stunned by words like “elders,” but cannot deny my maturity (I turn 65 four weeks from today). Slides (with hyperlinks) for my talk can be downloaded from http://download.yousendit.com/WUJZZUNqb0JZY1JjR01UQw.