Life in the Fast Lane Medical Blog
Emergency Medicine education blog
Acute hepatitis with jaundice and coagulopathy without hepatic encephalopathy is referred to as severe acute hepatitis. Fulminant hepatic failure is defined as the appearance of hepatic encephalopathy in a patient with acute deterioration of liver function with no previous history of liver disease.
You are asked to review a 73 year old lady who is in hospital for treatment of septic arthritis affecting a prosthetic right hip joint inserted 5 years earlier. The joint has been washed out and debrided twice, and she is receiving IV flucloxacillin and meropenem following culture of a methicillin-sensitive Staphylococcus aureus. She is on regular paracetamol for pain. Unfortunately, she has continued to deteriorate…
An 87 year old female presented with a subarachnoid haemorrhage. GCS 8/15. A nasogastric tube was unable to be placed due to patient agitation. As a consequence, the patient was fasted for five days due to concern about swallowing. Subsequently, an arterial blood gas was obtained:
