Flights - A Blow to the Head Recap and Expert Commentary

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Flights - A Blow to the Head Recap and Expert Commentary

Thanks to everybody who commented and contributed to the discussion on our last "Flight!" If you missed out on the case, check it out here.  We had a great discussion which we have recapped here.  Take a look below and a listen to the commentary provided by Dr. Bill Hinckley in the embedded podcast.  Look for our next flight to lift off in the next couple of weeks!

What medications could be used in the care of this patient? If the patient loses his IV, how does your treatment strategy change?

This first question sparked quite a bit of debate within the community.  Everybody agreed that this patient requires sedation, intubation, and more sedation.  There was, however, some significant differences in how the providers would go about attaining adequate sedation.

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Grand Rounds Recap - 4/8/15

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Grand Rounds Recap - 4/8/15

AirCare Grand Rounds

1. Indications for T pod

  • Blunt trauma + unstable pelvis
  • Blunt trauma + shock + pelvic tenderness to compression
  • Blunt trauma + shock + AMS/inability to evaluate pelvic pain

In patients with blunt trauma who are in shock and have AMS, incidence of pelvic fractures is 10%. In patients who die of blunt trauma during transport, open book pelvis fracture is the #1 cause of death (according to our own QI data)

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Flights - A Stab in the Dark - Curated Comments and Expert Commentary

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Flights - A Stab in the Dark - Curated Comments and Expert Commentary

Thanks to everybody who contributed to an excellent discussion of the care of the patient on our second “flight.”  If you didn’t get a chance to check out the case and the discussion, check it out here.  Below is the curated comments from the community and a podcast from Dr. Hinckley and Flight Nurse Practitioner Jason Peng

Q1 - Walk through your initial assessment of this patient.  What are the critical aspects of the assessment of this patient?

In response to this question, most everybody wanted to first act on the bleeding wound in the patient’s right antecubital fossa.  As explained by Dr. Renne, “I would want to be systematic but efficient, probably using a C-ABCD approach to these kind of critical patients, with the first C being any sort of life-threatening but "C"ontrollable hemorrhage.”  Dr. Renne also had a fine point with regards to checking for other potential, as of yet unseen, injuries.  This is a patient with multiple stab wounds, it is crucial to conduct a quick, but thorough search for stab wounds to the back, axilla, groin, and/or other locations where significant blood loss could be caused by a stab wound.

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Ketamine Fight Club: Ketamine in TBI

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Ketamine Fight Club: Ketamine in TBI

There has long been a concern for increases in ICP with administration of ketamine primarily stemming from reports of increased ICP in the Neurosurgery and Neuroanesthesia literature.  These increases were described primarily in patients usually with CSF outflow obstruction undergoing elective neurosurgical procedures.  In the time since these articles were published, the use of ketamine in a wide variety of patients with neurologic compromise has been reported.  In fact, there have been a couple of recent systematic reviews and meta-analyses on this topic.  These systematic reviews and meta-analyses have essentially analyzing all the same existing literature (which is generally poor in quality).  

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Procedural Sedation Cage Match

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Procedural Sedation Cage Match

It's a typical busy post-Thanksgiving shift in the ED.  It seems like patients with acute decompensated heart failure, sepsis, NSTEMI's and a whole host of other ailments are tucked in every corner and crevice of the ED.  Just as you finish putting in orders on the last patient you saw, your next patient rolls by on an EMS stretcher.  You see from your computer that the patient is on a backboard and in a c-collar after what clearly was some form of traumatic event.  He's screaming in pain and holding his left leg flexed at the hip and internally rotated.  "Jeez, I bet that hip is dislocated," you say to yourself.

You know you're going to need to reduce this dislocation, to not do so would risk avascular necrosis.  Tammy, one of the nurses you are working with that day is already 2 steps ahead of you.  "Doc, we're getting everything set up for the sedation, you're going to need for that hip that's out. What drugs do you want us to pull up?"

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Grand Rounds Recap - 11/13/14

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Grand Rounds Recap - 11/13/14

SBIRT (Screening, Brief Intervention, Referral, & Treatment) for Substance Abuse

Why should we care?

  • Prevalence of this disease is impressive with greater than 33,000 deaths attributed to alcohol in 2012 alone (287,000 MVC's in Ohio alone attributable to alcohol)
  • Medical problems attributable to alcohol use costs the US $100,000,000,000 annually (from health care bills to lost productivity)!
  • Approximately 33% of inpatient admissions in a country hospital population were attributable to alcohol
  • One in five Americans can be defined as at risk drinkers
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