Grand Rounds Recap 9.13.23

Grand Rounds Recap 9.13.23

Join us to recap another week of UCEM Grand Rounds! We start with a quick hits EKG lecture with Dr. Baez, focusing on common EKG findings associated with electrolyte abnormalities. Dr. Tillotson teaches us how to set up inhaled therapies for our critically-ill patients, while thousands of feet in the air! We then turn to Dr. Chang and learn how to expertly treat pain and perform procedural sedation on the smallest of patients we encounter as emergency physicians.

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Ketamine Potpourri

Ketamine Potpourri

In our most recent journal club, we took a look at 3 articles focused on the use of ketamine in the Emergency Department. When treating pain with ketamine, does a rapid administration of ketamine result in more dysphoria? When used for RSI, is ketamine more hemodynamically stable than etomidate? When using ketamine for procedural sedation in adult patients, does pre-treatment with versed or haldol decrease clinically significant emergence agitation?

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Procedural Sedation Cage Match

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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