LITFL • Life in the Fast Lane Medical Blog
LITFL • Life in the Fast Lane Medical Blog - Emergency medicine and critical care medical education blog
This edition contains 5 recommended reads. The R&R Editorial Team includes Jeremy Fried, Nudrat Rashid, Justin Morgenstern and Chris Nickson. Find more R&R in the Fastlane reviews in the R&R Archive, read more about the R&R project or check out the full list of R&R contributors
This Edition’s R&R Hall of Famer
Weiser et al. Initial Electrical Frequency Predicts Survival And Neurological Outcome in Out Of Hospital Cardiac Arrest Patients with Pulseless Electrical Activity. Resuscitation. 2018. PMID: 29408228
- 60/min may do better. In this study, this group \"showed a 30-days-survival rate of 22% and a good neurological outcome in 15% of all patients - comparable to shockable Cardiac Arrest rhythms\"."}" data-sheets-userformat='{"2":515,"3":[null,0],"4":[null,2,16711680],"12":0}'>Maybe PEA isn’t all ‘doom and gloom’. There is already emerging awareness that ‘pseudo-PEA’ may have a better prognosis, now this observational study from Vienna suggests that OOHCA patients and a heart rate >60/min may do better. In this study, this group “showed a 30-days-survival rate of 22% and a good neurological outcome in 15% of all patients – comparable to shockable cardiac arrest rhythms”.
- Recommended by: Chris Nickson
The Best of the Rest
Pediatrics
Babl FE, et al. Accuracy of Clinician Practice Compared With Three Head Injury Decision Rules in Children: A Prospective Cohort Study Annals of Emergency Medicine. 2018. doi.org/10.1016/j.annemergmed.2018.01.015
- Personally, I love when clinical decision tools are compared to physician judgement. It’s rarely done, and helps us determine if these tools are helping or hurting us take care of our patients. In this setting of low CT utilization, the use of decision tools did not perform as well as physician judgement. Clinicians had better specificity and positive predictive value, and similar sensitivity and negative predictive value.
- One caveat, this was done in a setting where head CTs are performed at a low baseline rate (unlike the U.S.), so be sure to take your own baseline utilization rate into consideration when applying these findings to your practice.
- Recommended by: Jeremy Fried
Emergency Medicine
Keijzers G, et al. Don’t just do something, stand there! The value and art of deliberate clinical inertia. Emergency medicine Australasia : EMA. 2018; PMID: 29327445
- This one is hot off the press, and the first of a three part series – look out for the rest… The article discusses the concept of ‘deliberate clinical inertia’, which is “the art of doing nothing as a positive response”. In particular, it talks about the barriers and strategies to overcome them. That’s right the 13th Law of the House of God wasn’t just a joke, often the best medicine really does involve doing as much nothing as possible. Should ‘doing nothing’ be a KPI?… A caveat is that the sicker the patient, the more likely intervention will be appropriate.
- Recommended by: Chris Nickson
Education
Hughes PG, et al. Ten Tips for Maximizing the Effectiveness of Emergency Medicine Procedure Laboratories. The Journal of the American Osteopathic Association. 2016; 116(6):384-90. PMID: 27214775
- The world would be a better place if (1) we all had regular procedure labs and (2) we all followed the 10 tips in this article.
- Recommended by: Chris Nickson
Resuscitation
Kawano et al. Intraosseous Vascular Access Is Associated With Lower Survival and Neurologic Recovery Among Patients With Out-of-Hospital Cardiac Arrest. Ann Emerg Med 2018 PMID: 29310869
- IO or IV in arrest? This study finds an association between IO use and worse neuro outcomes but, the data is extremely limited due to a host of biases. It’s unclear why IO was chosen as the route and the IO group was sicker overall. Additionally, with no evidence for benefit of any meds in cardiac arrest, there isn’t even a physiologic basis for why IO would be worse than IV. Ultimately, only a randomized trial can give us any useful information. We should continue to de-emphasize the importance of obtaining access in arrest.
- Recommended by: Anand Swaminathan
The R&R iconoclastic sneak peek icon key
| The list of contributors | The R&R ARCHIVE | ||
| R&R Hall of famer You simply MUST READ this! | R&R Hot stuff! Everyone’s going to be talking about this | ||
| R&R Landmark paper A paper that made a difference | R&R Game Changer? Might change your clinical practice | ||
| R&R Eureka! Revolutionary idea or concept | R&R Mona Lisa Brilliant writing or explanation | ||
| R&R Boffintastic High quality research | R&R Trash Must read, because it is so wrong! | ||
| R&R WTF! Weird, transcendent or funtabulous! |
That’s it for this week…
That should keep you busy for a week at least! Thanks to our wonderful group of editors and contributors Leave a comment below if you have any queries, suggestions, or comments about this week’s R&R in the FASTLANE or if you want to tell us what you think is worth reading.
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Research and Reviews in the Fastlane 195
Jeremy Fried
This post first appeared on LITFL: Life In The Fast Lane Medical, please read the originial post: here
