29 Mar 2019

March 29, 2019

Written by REBEL EM
On the last day of the last SMACC conference, Dr. Ken Milne (The SGEM) and I had a cage match debating four critical care controversies. It was all done in good fun with both of us taking our opportunities to poke a little fun at each other. While we took a pro vs con approach to the presentation, our positions are much closer than the debate demonstrates. Although the literature is far from perfect, development of critical appraisal skills and application of evidence-based medicine to the literature is what we should be using to inform our care but not dictate our care. It is equally as important to incorporate clinical judgment and ask our patients what their values and preferences are before making decisions about care.
Medical Categories: Neurology, Procedures and Skills, Resuscitation
5 Likes
7 Feb 2019

February 7, 2019

Written by REBEL Cast
Welcome back to REBELCast.  In this episode we talked with Jacob Avila about US guided PIVs. Difficult IV access in an already busy department can be a frustrating thing, but it doesn’t have to be.  Patients and providers are often frustrated for different reasons.  Patients for multiple IV attempts and providers because of the time it can take to perform the procedure, delays in care, or lack of success. If you want to get better at this all-important procedure, read/listen on.
Medical Categories: Procedures and Skills
0 Likes
6 Feb 2019

February 6, 2019

Written by REBEL Cast

Take Home Points

  1. Bed Up Head Elevated (BUHE) position is a simple intervention that can reduce the rate of intubation-related complications.
  2. The bougie should be considered standard practice in all intubations and has an NNT = 11 for 1st pass success.
  3. Consider using Suction Assisted Laryngoscopy for Airway Decontamination (SALAD) for all intubations to avoid the failed airway due to contamination.
Medical Categories: Procedures and Skills
0 Likes
31 Jan 2019

January 31, 2019

Written by REBEL EM

Background Information: The successful placement of an endotracheal tube (ETT) is a necessary skill all emergency physicians must possess. Performing life-saving interventions are understandably stressful as their failure can lead to morbid consequences and expedited patient death.1,2 The intensive training of emergency physicians, the availability of multiple alternative airway adjuncts and the use of rapid-sequence intubation has helped reduce the intubation complication rate among trauma and medical patients.3-5 Confirmatory methods to ensure the placement of the endotracheal tube are ever changing with no single method being infallible.6. Physical exam findings such as auscultation of the chest and epigastrium, visualization of thoracic movement and fogging of the ETT are not sufficiently reliable to confirm placement.7,8 The use of end-tidal CO2 detection has been shown to have a cumulative false-positive and false-negative failure rate of 10% in accurately confirming the ETT’s location according to the authors of this paper (The paper referenced is a bit dated)­.6 Furthermore, the usage of these devices may contribute to the complications as they frequently require up to 5 ventilations to obtain an accurate reading.9-11 This puts the patient at risk for aspiration especially if the tube is in the esophagus. No.12 Despite a post-intubation CXR taking time, exposing the patient to more radiation and adding to the cost of treatment, it still continues to remain the standard of care.12-14  The authors of this study wished to better understand the test characteristics of utilizing ultrasound to confirm ETT placement. They conducted a systematic review and meta-analysis to quantify the accuracy of this ETT confirmatory method.

Medical Categories: Procedures and Skills
0 Likes
15 Nov 2018

November 15, 2018

Written by REBEL EM

Background: Cricoid pressure is dead, right? Many have made this claim including a brilliant argument against its use by John Hinds here. Despite the many eulogies, we continue to hear about cricoid pressure so it makes sense that we dive in to the background prior to addressing the recent JAMA Surgery publication.

Cricoid pressure was first described by Dr. Sellick in the 1960’s though similar techniques were described as far back as the 1770s (Sellick 1961). The Sellick’s maneuver entailed the application of pressure over the cricoid cartilage with the thumb and 1-2 additional fingers.  The goal was to compress the cricoid cartilage against the esophagus in order to occlude the esophagus and prevent regurgitation of stomach contents into the upper airway. Initial studies on the maneuver suffered from a bevy of methodological flaws including small n, lack of blinding or randomization and selection bias. Despite this, Sellick’s maneuver was widely adopted and taught to hordes of anesthesia, critical care and emergency residents.

Studies investigating cricoid pressure in the last decade have demonstrated a number of issues with claims that it can prevent passive regurgitation. Check out this free chapter on EMRAP for an in depth discussion. Dynamic MRI studies demonstrate that application of pressure to the cricoid cartilage displaces the esophagus laterally instead of occluding it (Smith 2003, Boet 2012). An ultrasound study demonstrated similar findings: in 60% of patients the esophagus was lateral to the airway and cricoid pressure led to displacement rather than occlusion in all patients. (Tsung 2012).

Additionally, application of cricoid pressure decreases airway patency and increases the chance that your view of the airway will be obscured. (Allman 1995, Palmer 2000, Smith 2002, Oh 2013). Finally, no study to date has demonstrated a reduction in aspiration episodes with the application of cricoid pressure. A large observational study of pregnant patients undergoing C-sections found no difference in aspiration events and that the overall aspiration event rate was low (Fenton 2009). However, up until this point, there has not been a high-quality, randomized controlled trial performed.

Medical Categories: Procedures and Skills
0 Likes
en English
zh-CN Chinese (Simplified)en Englishfr Frenchde Germanit Italianpt Portugueseru Russianes Spanishtr Turkish
0