Medical Category: Cardiovascular

Background Information: Multiple illness severity scores have been developed for use after out-of-hospital cardiac arrest (OHCA) and in-hospital cardiac arrest (IHCA). Unfortunately, these rely on information that is not immediately available to providers in the early hours following return of …

Take Home Points AVNRT is a common tachydysrhythmia that results from a reentrant loop within the AV node. Unstable patients with AVNRT should be considered for immediate synchronized electrical cardioversion. Stable patients with AVNRT can have a trial of vagal …

Damping is the influence within a system that is a dissipation of energy during an oscillation.  In other words, think of damping like a shock absorber. Imagine a patient presenting with altered mental status.  All we know about the patient …

Background Information: Electrical cardioversion of atrial fibrillation is regularly performed by emergency physicians, intensivists, and cardiologists. Although many approaches to performing this procedure exist, the most common electrode placement is the anterior-lateral compared to the anterior-posterior positioning.1 The literature backing …

Take Home Points Consider AAA in patients with acute onset of back or abdominal pain particularly in patients > 50 and in those with a history of hypertension Consider ruptured AAA in patients (especially those > 50 years of age) …