Welcome to another ultrasound-based case, part of the “Ultrasound For The Win!” (#US4TW) Case Series. In this case series, we focus on a real clinical case where point-of-care ultrasound changed the management of a patient’s care or aided in the diagnosis. In this case, a 53-year-old man with history of diabetes mellitus presents with right index finger swelling.
A patient is brought to the Emergency Department by EMS (Emergency Medical Services) from a house fire. The patient’s skin and urine are discolored as shown. What is the most likely cause of the discoloration?
The above question is common from patients with a history of an allergic reaction seen for a repeat emergency department visit. The manufacturers of EpiPen caution not to use the pen beyond the expiration date, and if the drug solution becomes discolored (oxidation). But EpiPens are expensive! Is there harm in using the pen beyond the expiration date? What should we tell our patients?1
Insulin does MANY things in the body, but the role we care about in the Emergency Department is glucose regulation. Insulin allows cells to take up glucose from the blood stream, inhibits liver glucose production, increases glycogen storage, and increases lipid production. When insulin is not present, such as in patients with Type 1 diabetes mellitus (DM), all of the opposite effects occur.
The Pediatric Emergency Care Applied Research Network (PECARN) collaborative has teamed up with the ALiEM and CanadiEM teams to introduce the official PECARN visual decision rule aid for pediatric blunt head trauma! This has been a 6 month collaboration focused on bringing evidence-based research to the bedside in pediatric emergency medicine (EM).
Welcome to the Toxicology Module! After carefully reviewing all relevant posts from the top 50 sites of the Social Media Index the ALiEM AIR Team is proud to present the highest quality toxicology content. Below we have listed our selection of the 6 highest quality blog posts within the past 12 months (as of January 2017) related to Toxicologic emergencies, curated and approved for residency training by the AIR Series Board. More specifically in this module, we identified 0 AIRs and 6 Honorable Mentions. We recommend programs give 2 hours (about 20 minutes per article) of III credit for this module. As of June 2017, the AIR series is now being used by over 125 residency programs with over 1,200 residents completing at least one module in the 2016-2017 academic year.
Nothing says “emergency” like a bite from a venomous reptile. If you work in an area populated by snakes, which covers most of the United States and the world, then chances are good that you will see a patient with a snake bite in the Emergency Department (ED). The severity of the symptoms and the treatment vary greatly with different snakes. In this post, we will outline the ED approach to and management of common U.S. snake envenomation.