Emergency medicine resuscitation – When minutes matter…
A monthly (ish) summary of the emergency medicine literature
Every two months or so I write a monthly summary of the most interesting medical literature that I have encountered. This is one of those summaries. Continue reading “Articles of the month (March 2018)”
Another month and another batch of articles to keep your practice informed. As always, I have no specific selection criteria. These are all just papers that I found interesting. I am always happy to receive suggestions if you encounter a paper that makes you think. And, of course, make sure to have a listen to me and Casey Parker making fools of ourselves as we try to come up with intelligent things to say about these papers on the BroomeDocs podcast. Continue reading “Articles of the Month (January 2017)”
Welcome to another edition of the First1oEM articles of the month – a collection of my favorite reads from the emergency medicine literature.
Drennan IR, Strum RP, Byers A et al. Out-of-hospital cardiac arrest in high-rise buildings: delays to patient care and effect on survival. Canadian Medical Association Journal. 2016. [article]
This was a retrospective study looking at a cardiac arrest registry. They decided to look at the floor that you lived on to see if it impacted your survival from cardiac arrest (with the primary analysis looking above or below the 3rd floor). They found that living on higher floors was associated with an increased likelihood of death. In the raw numbers, 4.2% of patients living below the 3rd floor survived, compared to only 2.6% of those living on or above the 3rd floor (p=0.002). Survival above floor 16 was only 0.9%, and no one living above the 25th floor survived. The theory is that higher floors mean longer delays to EMS arrival, and therefore the ever important chest compression and defibrillation.
Geisler WM, Uniyal A, Lee JY. Azithromycin versus Doxycycline for Urogenital Chlamydia trachomatis Infection. The New England journal of medicine. 373(26):2512-21. 2015. PMID: 26699167
This is a randomized, controlled non-inferiority trial comparing azithromycin (1 gram PO once) to doxycycline (100mg PO BID for 7 days) in 587 adolescents with chlamydia infections. For the primary outcome of treatment failure at 28 days, there were no treatment failures in the doxycycline group as compared to 5 (3.2% 95%CI 0.4-7.4%) in the azithromycin group. Based on their assumptions, they could not establish the noninferiority of azithromycin in this group, although I imagine the result will vary greatly depending on local resistance patterns.
Greenslade JH, Parsonage W, Than M. A Clinical Decision Rule to Identify Emergency Department Patients at Low Risk for Acute Coronary Syndrome Who Do Not Need Objective Coronary Artery Disease Testing: The No Objective Testing Rule. Annals of emergency medicine. 2015. PMID: 26363570
We would all love a good rule to use to send chest pain patients home. This is a secondary analysis of 2 prior prospective ED trials including a total of 2396 chest pain patients. They derive 3 different rules that are supposed to tell you which patients don’t need further testing after biomarkers and ECGs. (Of course, if you have listened to me in the past, you will know that stress testing is not helpful in our low risk chest pain patients.) I am not going to go into the rules themselves, because I think the study is too flawed to be helpful. Incorporation bias is the major downfall of this study. Classic cardiac risk factors are a large component of these rules, but previous research has consistently shown that having classic cardiac risk factors does not help predict whether a patient’s chest pain is ACS in the emergency department. So how could those risk factors possibly help in a decision rule? It’s because the definition of ACS included unstable angina and revascularization, both of which are subjective outcomes determined by the cardiologist, and the cardiologists had access to the risk factor information. A patient with 5 risk factors is more likely to be cathed, but that doesn’t mean the cath was necessary. Similarly, a patient with more risk factors is more likely to be given the diagnosis of unstable angina. The risk factors didn’t predict the diagnosis of ACS, they were the cause of it.
Yamada NK, Yaeger KA, Halamek LP. Analysis and classification of errors made by teams during neonatal resuscitation. Resuscitation. 96:109-13. 2015. [pubmed]
I like the idea here: these authors videotaped a total of 250 real neonatal resuscitations and reviewed the tape to determine how well the neonatal resuscitation algorithm was followed. Continuous quality improvement in our most stressful resuscitations makes sense. These authors report that 23% of the actions observed were errors as compared to the published algorithm. However, I don’t think the errors were truly important errors. The most common error was failure to have a cap to place on the child’s head – is that really essential in the first minutes of resuscitation of an apneic neonate? There were some important errors reported, though, with half of the 12 intubation attempts lasting longer than 30 seconds. Although I don’t think this study really demonstrates it, neonatal resuscitations are stressful and rapid paced, making errors probable. Mental practice and simulation are great tools to help prevent these errors, in my very biased opinion.
If you want to review the newest NRP guidelines, you can see my post here.
Soares-Weiser K, Maclehose H, Bergman H. Vaccines for preventing rotavirus diarrhoea: vaccines in use. The Cochrane database of systematic reviews. 11:CD008521. 2012. PMID: 23152260
This is a Cochrane systematic review of two different vaccines (monovalent versus pentavalent) for rotavirus. They identified 29 RCTs covering 101,671 infants for the monovalent vaccine and 12 RCTs covering 84,592 infants for the pentavalent vaccine. Unfortunately, most studies use the relatively non-sensical “rotavirus specific diarrhea” as an endpoint, but it definitely seems to be decreased (RR 0.33 95% CI 0.21-0.50 for the monovalent). All cause diarrhea was also decreased in the trials that looked at it, with an NNT of about 40 for any diarrhea and 100 to prevent a hospitalization. There was no change in mortality. They did not document an increase in adverse reactions, but efficacy studies often under report harms.
Hsu JC, Chan PS, Tang F, Maddox TM, Marcus GM. Oral Anticoagulant Prescription in Patients With Atrial Fibrillation and a Low Risk of Thromboembolism: Insights From the NCDR PINNACLE Registry. JAMA internal medicine. 175(6):1062-5. 2015. PMID: 25867280
With the rise of the new, expensive anticoagulants, we are beginning to see a push to get these agents started for atrial fibrillation patients in the emergency department, ignoring the tiny daily risk of stroke and the importance for long term monitoring that we cannot provide. This is a registry based study. Out of a total of about 360,000 atrial fibrillation patients in the study, 11,000 had a score of 0 on two major stroke scales. However, 25% of this extremely low risk population was on blood thinner contrary to current guidelines.
Fauci AS, Morens DM. Zika Virus in the Americas – Yet Another Arbovirus Threat. The New England journal of medicine. 2016. PMID: 26761185 [free full text]
This is a basic review of the Zika virus that is currently causing a significant pandemic through Central and South America, and has potentially been linked to a significant number of birth defects (microcephaly) in Brazil. Zika is another mosquito borne virus without a specific treatment (like Dengue or Chikungunya). The symptoms are described as a milder version of Dengue fever, with fever, myalgias, eye pain, and maculopapular rash. Treatment is supportive.
Skaugset LM, Farrell S, Carney M. Can You Multitask? Evidence and Limitations of Task Switching and Multitasking in Emergency Medicine. Annals of emergency medicine. 2015. PMID: 26585046
Emergency physicians are masters of multitasking – or so we think. This review explains that most of what we think of as multitasking is really rapidly switching between tasks, and even if you are good at it, this task switching slows you down and results in error. Unfortunately, the solution promoted in most other fields – limiting interruptions – just isn’t feasible in emergency medicine. Some suggestions this review makes to help: prioritize tasks according to acuity, recognize when interruptions can be delayed or redirected, practice skills so they become automatic (and don’t add to cognitive load), and use mental frameworks or external brains to limit cognitive work. Of course, optimizing your departmental workflow to limit interruptions, especially at critical times, is also important.
Fox H, Hunter F. BET 1: Intravenous tranexamic acid in the treatment of acute epistaxis. Emergency medicine journal : EMJ. 32(12):969-70. 2015. PMID: 26598634
This is another one of those situations that we have to make decisions in the absence of any real evidence. The authors of this review were unable to find any studies to answer their specific question about the use of IV TXA in acute epistaxis. However, they do note that there are a few studies that show benefit of oral TXA in epistaxis as well as the study of topical TXA that I have previously discussed in this newsletter. Furthermore, the use of intravenous TXA in elective sinus surgery seems to limit blood loss, and we all know about the evidence for IV TXA in trauma. So there is no direct evidence, but plenty of reasons we might guess it could help.
Bugden S, Shean K, Scott M. Skin Glue Reduces the Failure Rate of Emergency Department-Inserted Peripheral Intravenous Catheters: A Randomized Controlled Trial. Annals of emergency medicine. 2015. PMID: 26747220
Tape and tegaderm has always seemed like a rather ineloquent method of securing IVs to me. In this non-blinded RCT of 380 peripheral IVs, they compared standard tegaderm and tape to skin glue (1 drop at the skin insertion site and one under the hub – this can be seen in this video.) For the primary outcome of IV failure (infection, phlebitis, occlusion, or dislodgement) at 48 hours, the skin glue was better (17% failure vs 27%, absolute difference 10% 95%CI 2-18%). The study was underpowered to assess the components of the composite outcome, but most of the failures were dislodgement. I don’t follow people for 48 hours – but a 27% failure rate with usual care seems high to me. Also, skin glue is likely more expensive. However, an NNT of 10 to avoid another IV stick would probably be attractive to many patients.
Piazza G, Hohlfelder B, Jaff MR. A Prospective, Single-Arm, Multicenter Trial of Ultrasound-Facilitated, Catheter-Directed, Low-Dose Fibrinolysis for Acute Massive and Submassive Pulmonary Embolism: The SEATTLE II Study. JACC. Cardiovascular interventions. 8(10):1382-92. 2015. PMID: 26315743
This is a large prospective study, but I won’t get too much into the details because their primary outcomes were a bunch of surrogate markers rather than patient important outcomes. Why included it then? They used a novel device that uses ultrasound to try to break up the PE, and then gave tPA at the very slow rate of 1mg/hr. So far the lytics for submassive PE trials have shown some promise, but aren’t convincing. Alternate methods (non-bolus) of giving the medication might be the thing that tip the balance in favour of lytics. But mostly I wanted to include this article to bring up two excellent blog posts written by Josh Farkas about ultrasound guided thrombolysis and controlled thrombolysis of submassive PE.
Moffett PM, Cartwright L, Grossart EA, O’Keefe D, Kang CS. Intravenous Ondansetron and the QT Interval in Adult Emergency Department Patients: An Observational Study. Academic emergency medicine : official journal of the Society for Academic Emergency Medicine. 23(1):102-5. 2016. [pubmed]
Droperidol, possibly the most useful medication I have never had the opportunity to use, was taken away because of what it could do to the QT interval, right around the time when ondansetron was coming to market. Then, as ondansetron was coming off patent, we found out that it prolonged the QT just like droperidol did. OK, I will take off my tin foil hat to write the rest of this. This is a prospective observational trial of 22 adult patients receiving ondansetron at a single hospital. They did ECGs at baseline and every 2 minutes for 20 minutes. The QT did lengthen by 20 msec (95% CI 12-26 msec), but this is almost certainly clinically insignificant. There were no adverse events.
Nishijima DK, Holmes JF, Dayan PS, Kuppermann N. Association of a Guardian’s Report of a Child Acting Abnormally With Traumatic Brain Injury After Minor Blunt Head Trauma. JAMA pediatrics. 169(12):1141-7. 2015. PMID: 26502172
I’ve included papers on the low risk of significant head injuries in children with isolated vomiting and isolated loss of consciousness before. This time we will look at whether parental concern that their child is acting abnormally, in isolation, is indicative of blood in the brain. This is another secondary analysis of the PECARN database. Out of 43,399 children in the original study, only 1297 were reported as acting abnormally. Of those, 411 (32%) had abnormal behaviour as their only finding. Only 1 child of these 411 had a clinically significant injury (0.2% 95% CI 0-1.3%). Of the smaller subset who had CTs performed, 4 out of 185 (2.2%) had any sign of traumatic brain injury. So injuries were rare, even when the parents report the child is not behaving normally.
Montague BT, Ouellette JR, Buller GK. Retrospective review of the frequency of ECG changes in hyperkalemia. Clinical journal of the American Society of Nephrology : CJASN. 3(2):324-30. 2008. PMID: 18235147 [free full text]
Remember memorizing the classic progression of ECG changes in hyperkalemia: peaked Ts, prolonged PR, flatted Ps, wide QRS, then the deadly sine wave? Well, forget it. This is a chart review that looks at the ECGs of 90 hyperkalemic patients. (This is actually a reasonable topic for chart review, given that both the potassium level and the ECG are likely to be objective and easily identified on the chart.) Only half of the patients had any ECG signs of hyperkalemia, and only 18% met their strict criteria (which meant peaked Ts that were documented to resolve as the potassium decreased.) Although the ECG was insensitive for hyperkalemia, that might not be the important question. I don’t care as much about the number of the potassium, but whether it is affecting the heart – and the ECG might be a better marker of cardiac outcomes, but we don’t know from this study.
Kearon C, Akl EA, Ornelas J et al. Antithrombotic Therapy for VTE Disease: CHEST Guideline. Chest. 2016. [free full text]
This is a new guideline from the American College of Chest Physicians covering antithrombotic therapy for VTE. The recommendation to know about: “For subsegmental PE and no proximal DVT, we suggest clinical surveillance over anticoagulation with a low risk of recurrent VTE (Grade 2C).” That’s right – they are suggesting NOT treating certain PEs! They also recognize the high false positive rate of CTPA, which I have discussed here before. When is a subsegmental PE likely to be a true positive? “We suggest that a diagnosis of subsegmental PE is more likely to be correct (i.e. a true-positive) if: (1) the CT pulmonary angiogram (CTPA) is of high quality with good opacification of the distal pulmonary arteries; (2) there are multiple intraluminal defects; (3) defects involve more proximal sub-segmental arteries (i.e. are larger); (4) defects are seen on more than one image; (5) defects are surrounded by contrast rather than appearing to be adherent to the pulmonary artery; (6) defects are seen on more than one projection; (7) patients are symptomatic, as opposed to PE being an incidental finding; (8) there is a high clinical pre-test probability for PE; and D-Dimer level is elevated, particularly if the increase is marked and otherwise unexplained.” The best way to avoid this dilemma all together is still to avoid ordering CTs in low risk patients.
Nielsen HK, Husted SE, Krusell LR. Anticoagulant therapy in deep venous thrombosis. A randomized controlled study. Thrombosis research. 73(3-4):215-26. 1994. PMID: pubmed
I may have included this one before. Its really the only RCT of anticoagulation for VTE that exists as far as I know. This is a prospective, randomized trial of 90 patients with proven, symptomatic DVTs comparing anticoagulation (heparin followed by warfarin) with an NSAID (phenylbutazone). All the patients had VQ studies performed, both initially and for follow up. About half of the patients had PEs (asymptomatically). There was no difference between the groups with regards to regression of DVT, recurrent DVT, or PE up to 60 days. In terms of mortality, there was one death in the anticoagulation group and none in the NSAID group. The only difference was that the anticoagulation group had an 8% rate of bleeding complications while they report no adverse events from the NSAID. Now this is a small and imperfect study – but quite amazingly, it’s the only real study of anticoagulation for VTE, and it’s negative!
Tabner A, Johnson G. Codeine: An Under-Recognized and Easily Treated Cause of Acute Abdominal Pain. The American journal of emergency medicine. 33(12):1847.e1-2. 2015. PMID: 25983269
I have no idea what to do with this one. They present 2 case reports of patients with abdominal pain in whom the ultimate diagnosis was sphincter of Oddi spasm secondary to codeine use. Both patients’ pain resolved rapidly with naloxone (400mcg), which is not one of my usual analgesics. But how should we use this information? I imagine that you could do a lot of harm trying to treat abdominal pain with naloxone. This is definitely an interesting diagnosis – and one that I have never seen, or at least recognized.
Friedman BW, Dym AA, Davitt M. Naproxen With Cyclobenzaprine, Oxycodone/Acetaminophen, or Placebo for Treating Acute Low Back Pain: A Randomized Clinical Trial. JAMA. 314(15):1572-80. 2015. PMID: 26501533
It’s sort of frustrating that trial after trial comes out telling us nothing really works for low back pain. Obviously we need to do something for our patients. This is a randomized, double-blind, placebo controlled trial comparing naproxen plus placebo to naproxen plus cyclobenzaprine and to naproxen plus oxycodone and acetaminophen in adults with acute non-traumatic lumbar back pain. For the primary outcome of a scale measuring pain and function, there was no difference between the groups. There were more adverse effects in the cyclobenzaprine and oxydodone/acetaminophen groups. The biggest weakness of this study was that there was relatively poor compliance with all treatment regimens, but that makes it more like real life.
The BLISS trial: Abdul-Aziz MH, Sulaiman H, Mat-Nor MB. Beta-Lactam Infusion in Severe Sepsis (BLISS): a prospective, two-centre, open-labelled randomised controlled trial of continuous versus intermittent beta-lactam infusion in critically ill patients with severe sepsis. Intensive care medicine. 2016. PMID: 26754759
This wasn’t even on my radar: should we be giving antibiotics (specifically beta-lactams) as a continuous infusion? I know, we all heard about time dependent versus dose dependent antibiotics in medical school, but I honestly thought that was useless pharmacological drivel, because the studies I have seen so far have indicated that dosing regimen doesn’t matter much when we are giving antibiotics. (Maybe because we are giving so many antibiotics to people who really don’t need them?) Anyhow, on to the study: this was a prospective, randomized, open-label study of 140 adult ICU patients with severe sepsis being treated with cefepime, meropenem, or piperacillin/tazobactam. They were randomized to either receive their antibiotics as a continuous infusion, or by the usual intermittent dosing. The primary outcome was clinical cure, and was lower in the continuous group (56% vs 34%; absolute difference 22% 95%CI 10-40%, p=0.011). Unfortunately, I’m not sure that is the most important outcome, and the study wasn’t powered for mortality, so there was no significant mortality difference despite the numbers being better in the continuous group.
Dulhunty JM, Roberts JA, Davis JS. A Multicenter Randomized Trial of Continuous versus Intermittent β-Lactam Infusion in Severe Sepsis. American journal of respiratory and critical care medicine. 192(11):1298-305. 2015. PMID: 26200166
Hold your horses. The previous study was open-label, but there is another, larger study that was double-blinded. This is a double-blind, double-dummy multi-center randomized controlled trial of 432 ICU patients with severe sepsis being treated with meropenem, ticarcillin-clavulanate, or piperacillin-tazobactam, again comparing continuous versus intermittent dosing. For the primary outcome, ICU free days alive at day 28, there was no significant difference between the groups (18 vs 20 day, p=0.38). 90 day mortality was also the same, 26% in the continuous group vs 28% with intermittent antibiotics (p=0.67). So was the previous study just an example of the bias that can occur with open-label studies, or might there be a small but real difference that these studies were just under-powered to detect?
Why did the scarecrow get an an award?
He was outstanding in his field
We vastly overestimate the benefits of many of the medications that we tell our patients are essential. As a result, you can hear many of the elderly coming well before you see them from the rattle of all the pills. A large percentage of emergency department visits are from medication side-effects, but most of these are misdiagnosed. So although this tool was designed more for family physicians, I think it probably has a role in emergency medicine as well
Medstopper: http://medstopper.com/
This is a tool developed by some very intelligent Canadian doctors (including the team behind another amazing FOAMed resource: The Best Science Medicine podcast) to help clinicians and patients make decisions about reducing or stopping medications. The thing I miss most about family medicine was the ‘drugectomy’: it was astounding how many patients would feel so much better just because we stopped a few of their less necessary or unnecessary medications.
A monthly collection of the most interesting emergency medical literature I have encountered.
Its that time again. Here are my favorite medical reads of the last month – well, actually, last 2 months. There are some really good papers in this edition. I hope you enjoy…
Riley RF, Newby LK, Don CW, et al. Diagnostic time course, treatment, and in-hospital outcomes for patients with ST-segment elevation myocardial infarction presenting with nondiagnostic initial electrocardiogram: a report from the American Heart Association Mission: Lifeline program. Am Heart J. 2013;165:(1)50-6. PMID: 23237133
This is a registry study of 41.560 patients diagnosed with a STEMI. Of those patients, 4,566 had an initial ECG that was non-diagnostic. About ⅓ had converted to STEMI within 30 minutes of their first ECG, and 75% within 90 minutes. The groups were otherwise similar.
Seamon MJ, Haut ER, Van Arendonk K. An evidence-based approach to patient selection for emergency department thoracotomy: A practice management guideline from the Eastern Association for the Surgery of Trauma. The journal of trauma and acute care surgery. 79(1):159-73. 2015. PMID: 26091330
This is a systematic review by the EAST group that included 72 studies an 10,238 patients looking to answer the question: should patients who present pulseless after critical injuries undergo emergency department thoracotomy to improve survival and neurologically intact survival?. Their review and recommendations are divided into 6 groups:
There a definitely a few issues with the data. Systematic reviews are only as good as the studies included, and none of the included studies were great. In case you were wondering, the reason that the denominator for neurologically intact survival and overall survival are different is that some studies didn’t report neurologic status.
Inaba K, Chouliaras K, Zakaluzny S. FAST Ultrasound Examination as a Predictor of Outcomes After Resuscitative Thoracotomy: A Prospective Evaluation. Annals of surgery. 262(3):512-8. 2015. PMID: 26258320
The criteria for thoracotomy based on ‘signs of life’ always seemed a bit soft to me. Could the omnipresent ultrasound probe help us make the decision to crack the chest? These authors prospectively enrolled all patients at their centre undergoing a resuscitative thoracotomy over the course of 3.5 years. They obtained cardiac views with an ultrasound on all these patients. In total, they performed 187 thoracotomies. 126 patients had cardiac standstill on ultrasound, and ZERO survived. If there was cardiac motion on ultrasound, 9/54 patients survived. The biggest problem with this data is probably the generalizability. 187 thoracotomies in 3 years is A LOT. My guess is these physicians are more skilled at both the thoracotomy (obviously) but also the cardiac ultrasound than I am. Might the ultrasound probe just delay the necessary procedure?
Rodriguez RM, Langdorf MI, Nishijima D. Derivation and Validation of Two Decision Instruments for Selective Chest CT in Blunt Trauma: A Multicenter Prospective Observational Study (NEXUS Chest CT). PLoS medicine. 12(10):e1001883. 2015. PMID: 26440607 [free full text]
This is the second attempt at a NEXUS CT chest tool. This paper covers both the derivation and validation studies of the new tool. It total, they prospectively enrolled 11,477 blunt trauma patients over 14 years of age at 8 level 1 trauma centres. They came up with two different instruments: one just for major injuries and another for major and minor injuries. In the validation, the CT-All tool (designed to catch major and minor injuries) had a 99.2% sensitivity and 20.8% specificity for major injury, and a 95.4% sensitivity and 25.5% specificity for all injuries. One major problem is the validation only occurred in patients who actually had CTs (less than half of the cohort) so it is hard to say how it will work when applied to all comers. The authors think this will decrease CT scanning, but like all decision instruments, the implementation should be specifically studied. If applied to lower risk populations, it could actually increase scanning.
Appelboam A, Reuben A, Mann C. Randomised Evaluation of modified Valsalva Effectiveness in Re-entrant Tachycardias (REVERT) study. BMJ open. 4(3):e004525. 2014. PMID: 24622951 [free full text]
This one has been talked about a lot since it came out. It is a multi-centre, non-blinded randomized control trial of 428 adult patients with supraventricular tachycardia comparing the standard Valsalva maneuver to a modified Valsalva. The modified Valsalva was performed by forced blowing for 15 seconds in the sitting position (standard Valsalva), but then patients were immediately laid flat and had their legs elevated to 45 degrees for 15 seconds. (A video of the procedure can be seen here.) At one minute after the procedure 17% of the standard Valsalva group and 43% of the modified group were in sinus rhythm (OR 3.7 95%CI 2.3-5.8 NNT=3.8). This translated into 19% fewer patients requiring adenosine (69% vs 50%, p=0.0002, NNT=5.3). The authors say that blowing into a 10ml syringe will replicate the Valsalva they performed with fancier equipment.
Lim SH, Anantharaman V, Teo WS, Chan YH. Slow infusion of calcium channel blockers compared with intravenous adenosine in the emergency treatment of supraventricular tachycardia. Resuscitation. 80(5):523-8. 2009. PMID: 19261367
This is a RCT of 206 adult patients with SVT randomized to either adenosine or a calcium channel blocker. The dosing of the CCBs was either verapamil 1mg/min to a max of 20 mg or diltiazem 2.5mg/min to a max of 50mg. Adenosine dosing was 6mg followed by 12 mg if needed. Calcium channel blockers did a better job converting to sinus rhythm (98% vs 86.5% p=0.002). 1 patient in the CCB group developed transient hypotension as compared to none in the adenosine group.
Holdgate A, Foo A. Adenosine versus intravenous calcium channel antagonists for the treatment of supraventricular tachycardia in adults. The Cochrane database of systematic reviews. 2006. PMID: 17054240
Just to complete the topic, this is the Cochrane review looking at calcium channel blockers versus adenosine in SVT. They found no significant difference in either reversion or relapse. Obviously, minor adverse events (the horrible chest pains, shortness of breath, and headaches) were higher in the adenosine group (10.8 versus 0.6% p<0.001). There was no statistical difference in hypotensive events, but all that occurred were in the calcium channel blocker groups (3/166 patients as compared to 0/171 patients.) There were no major adverse outcomes.
The FELLOW trial: Semler MW, Janz DR, Lentz RJ. Randomized Trial of Apneic Oxygenation during Endotracheal Intubation of the Critically Ill. American journal of respiratory and critical care medicine. 2015. PMID: 26426458
This is a randomized, controlled, non-blinded trial comparing apneic oxygenation during intubation to no apneic oxygenation in 150 adult patients in a single ICU. Apneic oxygen was provided by the addition of oxygen through nasal prongs at 15L/min. The primary outcome, lowest achieved oxygen saturation, was not different between the groups (median of 92% with usual care and 90% with apneic oxygenation). There were no differences in any of the secondary outcomes (incidence of hypoxemia, severe hypoxemia, desaturation, or change in saturation from baseline.) Apneic oxygenation has been shown to work in stable surgical patients – why would it be different here? The big reason is that this was not a comparison of apneic oxygenation to apnea, like would occur in a standard RSI. 73% of patients received either BiPAP or BVM during the apneic period. Of course nasal prongs aren’t adding anything to patients receiving positive pressure ventilation. These patients are not at all like the patients I generally intubate.
Cook D, Swinton M, Toledo F. Personalizing Death in the Intensive Care Unit: The 3 Wishes Project: A Mixed-Methods Study. Annals of internal medicine. 163(4):271-9. 2015. PMID: 26167721
I think one of medicine’s greatest current failures is the way we deal with death. That is a problem, seeing as death is the only certainty in medicine. This is a qualitative description of a program designed to personalize death in the ICU. To honor each patient, they asked dying patients, their families, and the clinicians to make 3 wishes that might provide dignity for the patient. The wishes were mostly simple, but profound, such as using a patient’s nickname, allowing a mother to lie in bed with her dying son, organizing volunteer work for family members, or celebrating a birthday. There were 5 categories of wishes: 1) humanizing the environment; 2) personal tributes; 3) family reconnections; 4) rituals and observances; and 5) “paying it forward”. The authors thought these added value through three domains: dignifying the dying patient, giving the family a voice, and fostering clinician compassion.
Maybe a better summary of this paper is on of my favorite videos by ZDoggMD: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NAlnRHicgWs
Mahler SA, Riley RF, Hiestand BC. The HEART Pathway randomized trial: identifying emergency department patients with acute chest pain for early discharge. Circulation. Cardiovascular quality and outcomes. 8(2):195-203. 2015. PMID: 25737484
This is a prospective, randomized control trial of 282 adult patients with symptoms of possible ACS without ST elevation, randomized to the use of the HEART pathway or usual care. The HEART pathway is a combination of the HEART score with 0 and 3 hour troponins. It was a relatively low risk group, with 6.4% of patients having an MI at 30 days. Using the HEART pathway reduced the use of cardiac testing from 69% to 57%, and none of the low risk group had any adverse events. The HEART pathway also increased early discharges and decreased length of stay. The two major problems with this study are its small size and the American setting. Although the score allow more patients to be discharged home in a setting where everyone is admitted, the results might be different if your chest pain admission rate is low to begin with, like it is where I work.
Filardo G, Di Matteo B, Di Martino A. Platelet-Rich Plasma Intra-articular Knee Injections Show No Superiority Versus Viscosupplementation: A Randomized Controlled Trial. The American journal of sports medicine. 43(7):1575-82. 2015. PMID: 25952818
This is a randomized, double blind, controlled trial comparing platelet rich plasma (PRP) injections to injections of hyaluronic acid for knee osteoarthritis. Each group got three weekly injections of their study medication. Symptoms and function were identical between the groups at 2,6 and 12 months. Considering that hyaluronic acid has been shown to have essentially no clinically relevant benefit, this comparison may as well have been with placebo. As a side note, it drives me nuts that so many people refer to this as “platelet rich plasma therapy”. “Therapy” implies to patients that it might actually do some good and skews the process of informed choice. So far, there is nothing therapeutic about platelet rich plasma.
Hutchinson BD et al. Overdiagnosis of Pulmonary Embolism by Pulmonary CT Angiography. Am J Roentgenol. 2015; 205(2): 271-7. PMID: 6204274
The patient was low risk, but you decided to order the CT anyway. Thank goodness you did, because it is positive for a PE. Well, not so fast. This is a retrospective look at 937 CTPAs for PE over 1 year at a single center. They had 3 blinded radiologists review each study, using their consensus as the gold standard. Of the 174 studies that were initially read as positive, these radiologists disagreed with that read (thought it was a false positive) in 45 cases (25.9%). This is consistent with multiple other studies.
SPLIT trial: Young P, Bailey M, Beasley R. Effect of a Buffered Crystalloid Solution vs Saline on Acute Kidney Injury Among Patients in the Intensive Care Unit: The SPLIT Randomized Clinical Trial. JAMA. 2015. PMID: 26444692
We have been hearing for a while now that normal saline, because of the large excess of chloride and resultant acidosis, is bad for sick patients. This is a multi-centre blinded, randomized trial of 2278 adult ICU patients comparing normal saline to a balanced solution (plasmalyte 148). There was no difference in the primary outcome of acute kidney injury (9.6% with plasmalyte and 9.2% with saline, p=0.77). There was also no difference in renal replacement therapy, ICU days, mechanical ventilation, or mortality. A few weaknesses of this study were that the median amount of fluid given was only 2L per patient and most patients received fluid prior to enrollment, a lot of which was balanced solution. The biggest problem for emergency medicine is that 70% of patients went to the ICU after elective surgeries, so these results are probably not generalizable to our septic patients who start out significantly acidotic.
Sterling SA, Miller WR, Pryor J, Puskarich MA, Jones AE. The Impact of Timing of Antibiotics on Outcomes in Severe Sepsis and Septic Shock: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis. Critical care medicine. 43(9):1907-15. 2015. PMID: 26121073
People have been quoting a 7% increased mortality with every hour antibiotics are delayed for a long time. Unfortunately, this is based off a single study, and we seemed to forget somewhere along the line that association does not equal causation. This is a meta-analysis of 11 studies covering 16,178 patients with severe sepsis or septic shock. There was no difference in mortality comparing early and late antibiotics groups. Of course, all of these studies are observational, as no severe sepsis patients are being randomized to delayed antibiotics.
HEAT trial: Young P, Saxena M, Bellomo R. Acetaminophen for Fever in Critically Ill Patients with Suspected Infection. The New England journal of medicine. 2015. PMID: 26436473 [free full text]
For some reason, people just love to hate on fever. It is present when people are sick, so it must be bad, right? We better rush to treat it. This is a randomized, double blind trial of 690 adult ICU patients with a fever and suspected infection, comparing acetaminophen 1 gram IV every 6 hours to placebo. Not surprisingly (unless you actually believed treating fever was helping patients) there was no difference in the primary outcome of ICU free days. There was also no difference in mortality at 28 or 90 days.
Ventura AM, Shieh HH, Bousso A. Double-Blind Prospective Randomized Controlled Trial of Dopamine Versus Epinephrine as First-Line Vasoactive Drugs in Pediatric Septic Shock. Critical care medicine. 43(11):2292-302. 2015. PMID: 26323041
Sure, it’s a small trial – but it was looking at small patients, so that’s OK. This is a double-blind, randomized controlled trial of 120 pediatric patients with severe sepsis comparing epinephrine to dopamine as the first line vasopressor. The study was stopped early due to increased mortality in the dopamine group (20.6% versus 7%). They also note decreased mortality when epinephrine was given early through a peripheral IV or an IO. Mortality was not the primary outcome, and the trial was small, so I wouldn’t be shocked to see contradictory results in the future.
Pivetta E, Goffi A, Lupia E. Lung Ultrasound-Implemented Diagnosis of Acute Decompensated Heart Failure in the ED: A SIMEU Multicenter Study. Chest. 148(1):202-10. 2015. PMID: 25654562
This is a multicentre, prospective cohort of 1005 ED patients looking to see if lung ultrasound could add to clinical judgement in the diagnosis of acute heart failure. The gold standard of heart failure was determined by a review of the final chart by a cardiologist and an emergency physician. This isn’t perfect, but there isn’t really a better option for CHF, and they were blinded to the ultrasound results and agreed with each other 97% of the time. Physician judgement alone for CHF is really good, with a sensitivity of 85.3% and a specificity of 90%. If you add ultrasound to this physician judgment, the sensitivity rose to 97% (95% CI, 95%-98.3%) and specificity to 97.4% (95% CI, 95.7%-98.6%), translating into positive and negative likelihood ratios of 22.3 and 0.03 respectively. The biggest caveat is that these were non-consecutive patients, because there had to be a doctor around with enough ultrasound skill (>40 scans) to get enrolled.
The multiple AHA guidelines are in this issue of Circulation
The ERC guidelines are in Resuscitation
There is too much to go through in this format. The quickest summary is that there is nothing really game changing in these guidelines, so keep providing the high quality care you already do, and don’t rush to waste your money on a new ACLS course. If you want more information, I wrote a post about the biggest changes here: http://first10em.com/2015/10/21/acls-2015/
Patient: Doctor, I broke my arm in 3 places. What should I do?
Doctor: Stop going to those places
I was incredibly impressed with the capacity for knowledge translation demonstrated by the free, open access medical education community this month when the new ACLS guidelines came out. Within a week, the internet was awash in summaries, podcasts, and infographics. If my quick summary wasn’t enough for you, here are a few other amazing resources:
BoringEM came up with a great series of infographics
