Cancer Patients' Prehospital Emergency Care: Post Hoc Analysis from the French Prospective Multicenter Study EPICANCER.

BACKGROUND: Very little data are available concerning the prehospital emergency care of cancer patients. The objective of this study is to report the trajectories and outcomes of cancer patients attended by prehospital emergency services. METHODS: This was an ancillary study from a three-day cross-sectional prospective multicenter study in France. Adult patients with cancer were included if they called the emergency medical dispatch center Service d'Aide Médicale Urgente (SAMU). The study was registered on ClinicalTrials.gov (NCT03393260, accessed on 8th January 2018). RESULTS: During the study period, 1081 cancer patients called the SAMU. The three most frequent reasons were dyspnea (20.2%), neurological disorder (15.4%), and fatigue (13.1%). Among those patients, 949 (87.8%) were directed to the hospital, among which 802 (90.8%) were directed to an emergency department (ED) and 44 (5%) were transported directly to an intensive care unit (ICU). A mobile intensive care unit (MICU) was dispatched 213 (31.6%) times. The decision to dispatch an MICU seemed generally based on the patient's reason for seeking emergency care and the presence of severity signs rather than on the malignancy or the patient general health status. Among the patients who were directed to the ED, 98 (16.1%) were deceased on day 30. Mortality was 15.4% for those patients directed to the ED but who were not admitted to the ICU in the next 7 days, 28.2% for those who were admitted to ICU in the next 7 days, and 56.1% for those patients transported by the MICU directly to the ICU. CONCLUSION: Cancer patients attending prehospital emergency care were most often directed to EDs. Patients who were directly transported to the ICU had a high mortality rate, raising the question of improving triage policies.

Impact of Point-of-care Testing on Length of Stay of Patients in the Emergency Department: A Cluster-randomized Controlled Study.

OBJECTIVES: Crowding is a frequent concern in the emergency department (ED). Laboratory point-of-care testing (POCT) has been proposed to decrease patients' length of stay (LOS). Our objective was to determine whether an extended panel of POCT solutions could reduce LOS. METHODS: This was a single-center, prospective, open-label, controlled cluster-randomized study. Blood test processing was randomized into 1-week inclusion periods: interventional arm (laboratory analyses performed on POCT analyzers implemented in the ED) or control arm (central laboratory). The primary endpoint was LOS of patients in the ED. Secondary endpoints were time to result (TTR), ED crowding surrogates, and average total cost of an ED visit in each arm. RESULTS: A total of 23,231 patients were included and 20,923 were analyzed for the main outcome measure. Mean ± SD age was 46 ± 20 years, and 7,905 (36%) underwent blood sampling. Mean ± SD LOSs were 203 ± 161 and 210 ± 168 minutes in the POCT and control arms, respectively. LOS reduction for the entire ED population was -9 minutes (95% confidence interval [CI] = -22 to 5, p = 0.22) compared to the control arm and -17 minutes (95% CI = -34.0 to 0.6, p = 0.06) for patients undergoing blood sampling. The mean ± SD TTRs were 28 ± 31 and 79 ± 34 minutes in the POCT and control arms, respectively (TTR reduction = -51 minutes, 95% CI = -54 to -48 minutes, p < 0.001). CONCLUSIONS: The implementation of an extended panel of POCT solutions in an ED did not significantly reduce the LOS, but reduced the TTR.

Agreement between arterial and venous lactate in emergency department patients: a prospective study of 157 consecutive patients.

INTRODUCTION: In the emergency department (ED), lactate is routinely used for risk stratification. Whether venous or arterial lactate measured on blood gas is interchangeable is not known. We hypothesized that venous lactate can be used instead of arterial lactate for the evaluation of acute patients in the ED. PATIENTS AND METHODS: This was a prospective single-center study. All patients requiring a lactate measurement were enrolled and we simultaneously drew arterial and venous blood. We followed up all patients to hospital discharge. Our primary aim was to evaluate agreements between the two measurements using Bland and Altman plots with the report of bias (mean difference) and limits of agreements. We also aimed to determine the rate of misclassification (defined as one measurement<1.8 mmol/l and the other>2.2). Our secondary aim was to evaluate their respective prognostic value to predict in-hospital death or admission in the ICU longer than 72 h. RESULTS: The mean age of the 132 analyzed patients was 62 years (SD: 18 years), and 59% were men. The mean difference (bias) between arterial and venous lactate was -0.6 mmol/l (limits of agreement: -1.7 to 0.6 mmol/l). The rate of misclassification was 8% (95% confidence interval: 3-2%). Both methods present similar performances for the prediction of poor outcomes, with an area under the receiving operator characteristic curves of 0.67 for both. Results were similar when focused only on septic patients. CONCLUSION: Venous and arterial lactates do not agree well, and there is a high misclassification rate. Venous lactate does not appear to be interchangeable with arterial sampling.