Postconcussive Symptoms Over the First 14 Days After Mild Traumatic Brain Injury: An Experience Sampling Study.

OBJECTIVE: This study examined changes in postconcussive symptoms (PCS) over the acute postinjury recovery period, focusing on how daily PCSs differ between mild traumatic brain injury (mTBI) and other injury types. SETTING: An urban emergency department (ED) in Western Pennsylvania. SUBJECTS: A total of 108 adult patients with trauma being discharged from the ED were recruited and grouped by injury type: mild TBI (mTBI; n = 39), head injury without mTBI (HI: n = 16), and non-head-injured trauma controls (TCs: n = 53). MAIN MEASURES: Subjects completed a baseline assessment and an experience sampling method (ESM) protocol for 14 consecutive days postinjury: outcomes were daily reports of headaches, anxiety, and concentration difficulties. RESULTS: Controlling for confounders, multilevel modeling revealed greater odds of headache and concentration difficulties on day 1 postinjury among the HI and mTBI groups (vs TCs). These odds decreased over time, with greater reductions for the HI and mTBI groups compared with TCs. By day 14, there were no group differences in PCS. In addition, only the HI group reported higher initial levels of anxiety and a steeper slope relative to TCs. CONCLUSION: Patients with HI, regardless of whether they meet the American Congress of Rehabilitation Medicines definition of mTBI, have higher odds of typical PCS immediately postinjury, but faster rates of recovery than TCs. ESM can improve understanding the dynamic nature of postinjury PCS.

Caring for Patients or Organs: New Therapies Raise New Dilemmas in the Emergency Department.

Two potentially lifesaving protocols, emergency preservation and resuscitation (EPR) and uncontrolled donation after circulatory determination of death (uDCDD), currently implemented in some U.S. emergency departments (EDs), have similar eligibility criteria and initial technical procedures, but critically different goals. Both follow unsuccessful cardiopulmonary resuscitation and induce hypothermia to "buy time": one in trauma patients suffering cardiac arrest, to enable surgical repair, and the other in patients who unexpectedly die in the ED, to enable organ donation. This article argues that to fulfill patient-focused fiduciary obligations and maintain community trust, institutions implementing both protocols should adopt and publicize policies to guide ED physicians to utilize either protocol for particular patients, in order to address the appearance of conflict of interest arising from the protocols' similarities. It concludes by analyzing ethical implications of incentives that may influence institutions to develop the expertise required for uDCDD but not EPR.

Prediction of serious infection during prehospital emergency care.

BACKGROUND: Regionalization of emergency care for patients with serious infections has the potential to improve outcomes, but is not feasible without accurate identification of patients in the prehospital environment. OBJECTIVE: To determine the incremental predictive value of provider judgment in addition to prehospital physiologic variables for identifying patients who have serious infections. METHODS: We conducted a prospective study at a single teaching tertiary-care emergency department (ED) where a convenience sample of emergency medical services (EMS) providers and ED clinicians completed a questionnaire about the same patients. Prehospital providers provided limited demographics and work history about themselves. They also reported the presence of abnormal prehospital physiology for each patient (heart rate >90 beats/min, systolic blood pressure <100 mmHg, respiratory rate >20 breaths/min, pulse oximetry <95%, history of fever, altered mental status) and their judgment about whether the patient had an infection. At the end of formal evaluation in the ED, the physician was asked to complete a survey describing the same patient factors in addition to patient disposition. The primary outcome of serious infection was defined as the presence of both 1) ED report of acute infection and 2) patient admission. We included prehospital factors associated with serious infection in the prediction models. Operating characteristics for various cutoffs and the area under the curve (AUC) were calculated and reported with 95% confidence intervals (95% CIs). RESULTS: Serious infection occurred in 32 (16%) of 199 patients transported by EMS, 50% of whom were septic, and 16% of whom were admitted to the intensive care unit. Prehospital systolic blood pressure <100 mmHg, EMS-elicited history or suspicion of fever, and prehospital judgment of infection were associated with primary outcome. Presence of any one of these resulted in a sensitivity of 0.59 (95% CI 0.40-0.76) and a specificity of 0.81 (95% CI 0.74-0.86). The AUC for the model was 0.71. CONCLUSIONS: Including prehospital provider impression to objective physiologic factors identified three more patients with infection at the cost of overtriaging five. Future research should determine the effect of training or diagnostic aids for improving the sensitivity of prehospital identification of patients with serious infection.

An assessment of ventilation and perfusion markers in out-of-hospital cardiac arrest patients receiving mechanical CPR with endotracheal or supraglottic airways.

AIM OF THE STUDY: Mechanical chest compression (MCPR) devices are considered equivalent to manual compressions in patient outcomes in out-of-hospital cardiac arrest (OHCA). However, recent data suggest possible harm in patients with a supraglottic airway device (SGA) during MCPR. The aim of this study was to evaluate differences in direct and indirect markers of ventilation and perfusion in patients with cardiac arrest receiving MCPR and who had their airway managed with an endotracheal tube (ETT) or SGA. METHODS: We retrospectively reviewed Emergency Medical Services (EMS) agencies and emergency department (ED) records over a two-year period. We included patients with OHCA who underwent MCPR and who had an advanced airway placed. The primary outcome was differences in intra-arrest end-tidal carbon dioxide (etCO2) measurements. Secondary outcomes included intra-arrest ventilation rates, rates of prehospital return of spontaneous circulation (ROSC), blood pressure upon prehospital ROSC, and 24-h survival. RESULTS: Valid data sets were available for 126 patients. Eighty-four (66.7%) had an ETT placed, and 42 (33.3%) had a SGA placed. Twenty-eight (22.6%) achieved prehospital ROSC. Twenty-four-hour survival data were available for 13 (10.3%) of these patients. There were no significant differences in primary or secondary outcomes. CONCLUSION: In this retrospective study, we found no evidence of differences in markers of ventilation, perfusion or prehospital ROSC and survival in patients with OHCA who had their airway managed with either an ETT or SGA while receiving MCPR.