The First10EM monthly wrap up is a place for me to share updates about the website, about my academic life, and also interesting content, such as books, podcasts, and other FOAMed, that I have encountered in the prior month. Obviously the format means the focus is mostly on content I […]
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Are patients allowed to eat in your department? Do you field endless phone calls from nurses asking whether a patient is allowed to eat? Have you ever witnessed a confrontation between a nurse and a patient or family member over NPO status? The concept of forcing emergency patients to remain […]
I have been doing this for 10 years now. I am not sure what the future holds. I am not sure what First10EM will look like in another 10 years. I am not sure these words will be published (although if you are reading it, I guess we have our […]
I have covered calcium channel blockers for atrial fibrillation a number of times. If you are pursuing a rate control approach, calcium channel blockers probably result in more rapid control. Thus, if you are trying to send these patients home, they might be a good choice. However, for long term […]
The decision between mechanical thrombectomy and catheter directed thrombolysis for pulmonary embolism is not one that most emergency physicians are making. Most (like me) probably don’t even have access to such therapies, which might be a good thing, as both therapies remain completely unproven. However, I thought I would share […]
Do you change your practice when new evidence is published? Will these articles change your practice? Will you read them? Does anyone read them? I don’t know, but here is another month of my reading summarized. For the regular readers, you will have noticed I have taken a few weeks […]
Another month, another set of articles. Perhaps some are useful. Perhaps some will guide your practice. At least one should completely blow your mind.
Antibiotic resistance is an existential problem. Optimizing sepsis care, including the appropriate length of antibiotic therapy, is an important goal. So should we be willing to allow an increase in mortality to reduce total antibiotic use, as the ADAPT-Sepsis non-inferiority design seems to imply?
When managing hyponatremia, the primary concern (at least as far as I have always been taught) is osmotic demyelination syndrome. We are warned not to correct the sodium too quickly, because the neurologic outcome can be awful. However, demyelination is very rare, and apparently there is a lot of data […]