Medical Category: Trauma

Take Home Points on Blunt Cardiac Injury No single test can be used to exclude BCI. However a thorough physical exam combined with a 12-lead EKG, troponin measurement, and echocardiography can be used to characterize BCI and direct care Obtain …

Every now and again someone raises the issue on social media about resuscitative thoracotomy.  What are the indications (we have the EAST guidelines for that), what are the risks (highlighted in this important recent paper), and of course, whether EM …

Background: Multiple guidelines recommend tramadol or NSAIDs as 1stline treatment for patients with osteoarthritis (OA).  Tramadol is viewed as a weak opioid because it binds to the mu receptor at a significantly lower affinity than morphine.It also inhibits the reuptake of serotonin …

The management of the critically hemorrhaging trauma patient has seen a large amount of change over last decade, from bringing care far forward to the field to early use of blood products to civilian translation and application tourniquets to name a …

Take Home Points: If the patient is a clear traumatic arrest, compressions aren’t indicated and, instead we should focus on the important interventions that need to be done. Ultrasound can be incredibly helpful in traumatic arrest. If you’ve got a …