PE or NOT PE? That is the Question

PE

Prasad. V., Rho J., Cifu A., A Metaphor for Medicine in the Evidence Based Medicine Era Achives Internal Med  Vol 172 (no 12) June 25, 2012TG 9† In this article the Authors from Chicago discuss how the concept of PE has changed over the last 100 years. Originally PE was diagnosed clinically with minimal or [...]  Read More »

Afebrile Febrile Convulsions – What?

lumbar puncture

How can you have an afebrile febrile convulsion? Well, it turns out you can. It occurs as convulsions in children with an acute infective illness and no fever. Usually the illness is a gastroenteritis. It denotes a more benign form of convulsion, similar to a classic febrile convulsion. A febrile convulsion is defined as a [...]  Read More »

Bedside Ultrasound and Renal Colic

Renal Colic

Can Bedside Ultrasound be a Tool in the Assessment and Management of Renal Colic? Bedside ultrasonography (BUS) has become a significant tool in the diagnostic repertoire of the emergency physician in recent years. Over the same period the use of, and potential risks of, CT imaging have come to the fore. Since the mid-1990s CT [...]  Read More »

Carotid Dissection-When to Suspect, When to Scan.

Carotid Artery Dissection

Have you ever wanted to order a test, especially a radiological one and after hours at that and were made to feel inept, for asking? It’s after 11pm, here’s the how the conversation goes: PK: “Hello Dr (fill in space) PK here, one of the ED consultants. Sorry to bother you, but I wanted to [...]  Read More »

A ‘Rare as Hen’s Teeth’ Diagnosis

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Have you ever had one of those cases where you thought, “I am so good, picking that”, even if you didn’t say it out loud. Or have you ever had one of those diagnoses where you thought ” I am so lucky”, it didn’t go, all ordinary on me. Well here is a recent case [...]  Read More »

How to make your own AIRWAY CAM

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Here is a quick and cool way to make your own airway camera.Use it  to demonstrate and teach the technique of  intubation. It costs about $100 to put together, but can be as cheap as $50 to make. It’s amazingly effective! Part of its charm, I think, is that it looks like it’s been put [...]  Read More »

Airway Management in Out-of-Hospital Cardiac Arrest

Airway Tape 6 00455923

We all spend a significant amount of time and effort in training in and practicing advanced airway management. One of the reasons that it is such an important skill, for the emergency physician or trainee, is so that we can address the A in DRSABC, in the event of a patient in cardiac arrest. Over [...]  Read More »

Cement Burns: “She’ll be right mate”. Maybe not.

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Here is the case. A 48 year old man presents with some redness and burns on his lower limbs. He was using cement one day previously, laying a concrete slab and standing in it, his denim pants soaked. He felt some mild discomfort at the time, but now that he has seen his legs, he [...]  Read More »

Modified Sgarbossa Rule for diagnosing MI in Left Bundle Branch Block

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Identifying a ST Elevation Myocardial Infarction (STEMI) in an ECG with a Left Bundle Branch Block(LBBB) can be challenging. We do know that the number of patients that come in with LBBB and chest pain, that are having a STEMI is very low (J Am Coll Card2012;60:96-105). It makes it even more important to try [...]  Read More »

Differentiating Subarachnoid from Benign Headache

CerebralAngiogram

One of the things I strongly dislike, is when a patient comes into the emergency department with a complaint of headache and it has features of a subarachnoid haemorrhage(SAH), and I just dont know if it is or not, so I err on the side of being careful and CT and LP. When we read [...]  Read More »