EMCrit Archives

The brand new ACLS & BCLS guidelines were published last week. Not huge changes, but some good stuff! The free full text is available at the Circulation website. It takes hours to make your way through all of it. I boiled it down to just the facts and posted a summary on the EMCrit site. In this EMCrit Podcast I discuss some of the highlights that I think are particularly important.

What if I told you that I think that patient you just sent home with vertigo may have been a missed cerebellar stroke? Would you be dialing risk management or could you tell me all of the reasons why I'm wrong? Isolated vertigo without other neurological findings can't be a stroke, right? That is true, if you are doing the right exam, but if you are just doing your standard ED neuro screening exam then you might be missing serious pathology. In this episode of the EMCrit podcast, I discuss how to perform the tests that will differentiate a peripheral cause of continuous vertigo from a cerebellar stroke.

Hey folks. As I get ready for ACEP, I just wanted to get a quick podcast put up. One of the listeners requested an episode on the treatment of hyperkalemia in the ED.

This week we talk about managing the intra-arrest period of cardiac arrest. My paradigm has changed dramatically over the past few years. In the past, I viewed the arrest as a period to teach my residents how to place a subclavian central line, how to intubate when the patient is moving, and how to cram as many drugs as possible into a patient in a short period of time. Looking at how I manage an arrest today, so much has changed.

This week we discuss the resuscitation of the hemorrhagic shock patient with Dr. Richard Dutton, MD.

It seems the government and other specialties are trying hard to make sedation as difficult as possible in the ED. We must persevere to provide the best procedural sedation to allow maximal comfort and safety for our patients. This continues the discussion started in Part I.

Here is a piece I wrote for EMPGU

This is the audio only version of the previous post (Part I of the Sedation Talk).

It seems the government and other specialties are trying hard to make sedation as difficult as possible in the ED. We must persevere to provide the best procedural sedation to allow maximal comfort and safety for our patients. This brief lecture was originally posted on the defunct EMCrit Lecture Site on 8/7/2009.

Severe CNS Infections are time dependent diagnoses! You must have a high index of suspicion, a good plan for your work-up, and rapid provision of treatment. After seeing a severely ill meningitis patient, I figured I would do a podcast on some tips and pearls on this topic.

This week, I am joined by Leon Gussow, MD of the excellent blog: The Poison Review (TPR). TPR is my source for new toxicology articles; I highly recommend it as an incredible read. I got to meet Leon for a few beers a month ago; he is just a great guy. My Canadian pal, Ram, suggested calcium channel blocker OD as a podcast episode. Ram, here you go.

At this stage of the game, if your hospital is not offering hypothermia to out-of-hospital cardiac arrests, you are probably lagging behind optimal care. For shockable rhythms, you essentially double your patient's chances of leaving the hospital with good neurological outcome. However hypothermia can be tough, unless you have done a bunch. Learn from my mistakes in this lecture.

When I was a resident, every vent lecture either put me to sleep or left me dazed and bewildered. I gave a lecture of that ilk when I started working after fellowship--I had become part of the problem. I decided there must be a way to make vent management more understandable and if not interesting, at least bearable.

When I was a resident, every vent lecture either put me to sleep or left me dazed and bewildered. I gave a lecture of that ilk when I started working after fellowship--I had become part of the problem. I decided there must be a way to make vent management more understandable and if not interesting, at least bearable.

Even when we can't cure a patient, we can relieve suffering. On average, we kind of stink at pain control in the ED. One physician, Dr. Ed Gentile, has created a simple path to optimal acute pain control in the ED. I heard this lecture on the EM:RAP podcast and got permission from Drs. Gentile and Herbert to repost it here. This is not a critical care topic per se, but it is applicable to the critically ill, the non-critically ill--basically any patient who is in pain in the ED.