20 Mar 2019

March 20, 2019

Written by REBEL Cast, REBEL Core

Take Home Points on Oncologic Emergencies:

  1. Hyperviscosity Syndrome happens when elevated WBCs or severe hyperproteinemia cause high serum viscosity and micro-circulatory problems in patients with Waldenstrom’s macroglobulinemia, multiple myeloma or acute leukemia. Be suspicious of this syndrome in these patient’s when they present with the classic triad of mucosal bleeding, visual disturbances, and neurological symptoms or with any end organ failure.
  2. Tumor Lysis Syndrome results from high turnover of malignant cells resulting in severe metabolic derangements including hypocalcemia, hyperkalemia, hyperphosphatemia, hyperuricemia, AKI, metabolic acidosis. Be suspicious of this in patients presenting with edema, hematuria, fatigue, weakness, altered mental status or symptoms that go along with specific metabolic derangement, particularly if they recently received chemotherapy, radiation or high dose steroids.
 
Medical Categories: Hematology and Oncology
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6 Mar 2019

March 6, 2019

Written by REBEL Cast, REBEL Core

Take Home Points:

  1. 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.
  2. Ultrasound can be incredibly helpful in traumatic arrest. If you’ve got a traumatic arrest patient with neither pericardial fluid nor cardiac activity, it may be reasonable to stop resuscitation without the thoracotomy.
  3. When decompressing the chest, it’s better to place you angiocath in the 5th intercostal space in the anterior axillary line. This helps you avoid the great vessels in the as well as the thick anterior chest wall
  4. And last, if you are doing a thoracostomy, you may as well go bilaterally. You are doing invasive things to a dying patient, there is no reason to guess where the problem is. Similarly, if you have to do a thoracotomy, you could consider making it a clamshell as it space to look into and making sure the right side of the chest is accessed.
Medical Categories: Trauma
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20 Feb 2019

February 20, 2019

Written by REBEL Cast, REBEL Core

Take Home Points:

  1. Hypothermia is neuroprotective and patients can survive prolonged periods of cardiac arrest. Termination of resuscitative efforts in cardiac arrest should not considered until the patient is >32°C or has a K > 12 mEq/L
  2. Active internal rewarming is the keystone of treatment for unstable hypothermic patients. Utilize available resources including ECMO to effectively warm your patient
  3. Consider alternate causes for hypothermia, especially in patients who fail to respond to warming
Medical Categories: Environmental
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18 Feb 2019

February 18, 2019

Written by REBEL Cast
Background: The use of intravenous lidocaine for analgesia in patients presenting to the emergency department (ED) with renal colic has gained recent traction and interest, and was previously explored on the REBEL EM blog. Literature has been mixed, with one trial (Soleimanpour 2012) demonstrating analgesic benefit, but two smaller trials (Firouzian 2016) (Motamed 2017) finding no such role for IV lidocaine. Nonetheless, uptake has been brisk (Fitzpatrick 2016). The authors of this study (The LIDOKET Trial) sought to better define the utility of IV lidocaine for the treatment of renal colic.
Medical Categories: Renal and Genitourinary
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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
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