April 2018

Children needing deep sedation in the ED were not at greater risk for adverse events if they had Mallampati III/IV scores.  But they did need to be repositioned more often than children with Mallampati I/II scores.

We want to promote great #FOAMed, and one of the finest medical blogs out there is Dr. Smith's ECG Blog (no relation...alas). This features some of his top posts and 5 ECG patterns you must know.

Risk of completed suicide in young adults or adolescents was much higher in the year following a self-harm event, especially if by a violent means.

POCUS had reasonable diagnostic accuracy for the diagnosis of constipation by measuring the transrectal diameter and using a cutoff of 3.8cm, and it performed slightly better than x-ray.

Syncope and seizure may be differentiated in two key ways.  Ten or fewer jerks favor syncope; 20 or more jerks favor seizure.  Loss of tone favors syncope.

High-flow nasal cannula (HFNC) helped reduce treatment failure compared to standard nasal cannula in infants under 12 months with bronchiolitis requiring supplemental oxygen, NNT = 9.

Among patients with atrial fibrillation with RVR who received an initial IV loading dose, PO diltiazem was associated with better heart rate control at 4 hours compared to IV diltiazem infusion. 

With all the talk of using balanced, lower chloride solutions for volume in the ED and ICU, we thought it might be a good idea to discuss the potential downsides of LR.

Bag mask ventilation and endotracheal intubation were equal for airway management in patients with cardiac arrest in terms of good neurological outcome at 28-days.

Positive responses to "red flag" screening questions for back pain warranted further investigation, though the positive predictive value was poor.  Negative responses to screening "red flag" questions were useless as a screening tool for ruling out serious disease, such as fracture, infection, malignancy, or cauda equina.