July 2015 REBELCast
Welcome to the July 2015 REBELCast, where Swami, Matt, and I are going to talk oxygen. It is important to remember that oxygen is a drug, and just like any drug we prescribe to patients it has potential side effects. Although there is a paucity of clinical trial data to support routine use of supplemental oxygen, most health care providers still put oxygen on patients for possible physiological benefits. So with that introduction today we are going to specifically tackle:
- Topic #1: The AVOID Trial – Supplemental O2 vs Room Air for STEMI
- Topic #2: The FLORALI Trial – High Flow Nasal Cannula (HFNC) for Acute Hypoxemic Respiratory Failure Read more →
This year I was fortunate enough to attend the 3rd annual Social Media And Critical Care (SMACC) conference from June 23rd – 26th, 2015 in Chicago, IL. This year the conference was dubbed as SMACC Chicago and followed by the hashtag #smaccUS on twitter. I tried to keep track of all the great take home messages while at the conference for those not lucky enough to make it or who have not heard of it. For those of you who have not heard of SMACC, it is a modern, academic meeting, mixed with on-line technologies to deliver innovation in education in the fields of emergency medicine and critical care. This conference addresses important clinical issues in a format that is energetic, cutting edge, and yet reputable. If you wanna see what the conference was about last year checkout this link: 
Welcome back to a special edition, or should I say “bootcamp edition” of REBELCast. We have started to do something new by inviting guests onto the show to discuss papers in the literature they find interesting. This month I had the pleasure of working with Steve Carroll, an emergency room physician in my neck of the woods, down in San Antonio, TX. Today, Steve and I are going to specifically discuss how to manage the hypoxic and agitated patient, and the topic we are discussing:
Background: Intravenous morphine use has been reported in nearly one of seven patients hospitalized with acute decompensated heart failure (ADHF). I have anecdotally, even seen physicians giving morphine as a “first-line” agent: Nitroglycerine, Non-Invasive Positive Pressure Ventilation (NIPPV), and Morphine. There is surprisingly little evidence supporting routine use of morphine in ADHF, and no major American cardiology or emergency medicine society has really endorsed or published any recommendations on the treatment of ADHF with morphine.
Background: In 2010, 5.4% of all emergency department (ED) visits in the United States were for chest pain. Admission or observation of such patients cost about $11 billion dollars in the United States in 2006. The majority of these admissions are commonly determined to be non-cardiac in etiology. Many physicians and patients believe that a hospital admission or extended observation after a “negative” ED workup has a safety benefit for patients. Previous studies have looked at 30-day mortality, but no current large trials have looked the short-term risk for clinically relevant adverse cardiac events, including inpatient STEMI, life-threatening arrhythmias, cardiac or respiratory arrest, or death. Other things to keep in mind is that one of the pitfalls of hospitalization of chest pain patients can lead to false-positive testing, hospital-acquired infections, venous thromboembolism, and other iatrogenic events, and can have greater than a 2% rate of adverse events at 30 days often cited as the upper boundary estimate for low-risk chest pain patients.
