Left ventricular assist devices (LVADs) have moved from being a bridge to a heart transplant to destination therapy for patients with severe heart failure. Although their use in the general public has increased, they still provide a challenge to the emergency medicine (EM) physician. This series aims to cover the basics of how the EM physician approaches the care of these patients.
Welcome to the AIR Trauma 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 online content related to trauma emergencies. 8 blog posts within the past 12 months (as of January 2020) met our standard of online excellence and were curated and approved for residency training by the AIR Series Board. We identified 2 AIR and 6 Honorable Mentions. We recommend programs give 4 hours (about 30 minutes per article) of III credit for this module.
Left ventricular assist devices (LVADs) have moved from being a bridge to a heart transplant to destination therapy for patients with severe heart failure. Although their use in the general public has increased, they still provide a challenge to the emergency medicine (EM) physician This series aims to cover the basics of how the EM physician approaches the care of these patients. Last week we covered the physical exam. This week: the diagnostic evaluation.
Left ventricular assist devices (LVADs) have moved from being a bridge to a heart transplant to destination therapy for patients with severe heart failure. Although their use in the general public has increased, they still provide a challenge to the emergency medicine (EM) physician. This series aims to cover the basics of how the EM physician approaches the care of these patients.
Image 1. Case courtesy of Radswiki, Radiopaedia.org
A 26 year-old male presents with new medial right knee pain after twisting his knee playing soccer 3 weeks ago. His initial pain has since resolved.
What is your diagnosis? What examination findings should you expect? What associated diagnoses should you assess for? What is your management in the emergency department?
Case: A 32-year-old male with a past medical history of diabetes presents with a 1 month history of finger pain after slamming his finger in a car door. 2 weeks after the initial incident he presented to the emergency department for worsening pain and received x-rays that were negative for acute fracture. Today he presents reporting pain radiating up the hand, arm, and into the shoulder, with associated chills. His labs are significant for hyperglycemia, hyponatremia, and an elevated erythrocyte sedimentation rate and c-reactive protein. His x-ray is seen here (figure 1 image courtesy of Daniel Rogan, MD). What is the diagnosis?
Have you ever been working at 3am and wondered, “Am I missing something? I’ll just splint and instruct the patient to follow up with their PCP in 1 week.” This is a reasonable approach, especially if you’re concerned there could be a fracture. But we can do better. Enter the “Can’t Miss” series: a series organized by body part that will help identify injuries that ideally should not be missed. This list is not meant to be a comprehensive review of each body part, but rather to highlight and improve your sensitivity for these potentially catastrophic injuries. We’ve already covered the elbow and wrist. Now: the foot and ankle.