The Resus Room

Welcome back to the Papers of the Month podcast, once again we've got 3 more papers to inform, discuss and hopefully improve our practice. First up we have a look at a paper which looks to quantify the prognostic utility of lactate in our sick Resus patients; we often look at the initial lactates and draw conclusions for what they mean, but this paper helps us understand the results a bit further. For our patients that sustain a head injury, the NICE guidelines advocate that all patients on direct oral anticoagulants should have a CT head scan, irrespective of clinical findings or other high risk features of the patients history. Quantifying the risk that these patients have for an intracranial bleed is really important, as to date it isn't fully understood. Our second paper looks at this directly and can help inform practice, guidelines and discussions with patients. Finally; we often think about how we can improve resuscitation of our patients in cardiac arrest, look for the latest treatment and evidence, b

Drug ingestion both accidental and intentional accounts for a significant proportion of attendances at UK Emergency Departments and 999 calls. In 2016 there were >2,500 registered deaths in England and Wales related to drug misuse, which had increased by nearly 60% in a decade. So without a doubt we are all going to come across critically unwell patients with drug ingestions. But inappropriate drug use is not confined to illicit substances, with many prescription drugs being misused to ill effect and also overdosed in an attempt to end patients lives. In this podcast we’re going to run through the assessment of patients presenting with a possible drug ingestion, cover the potential toxidromes you may encounter and talk about the management of these presentations. Specifically we take a look at serotonin syndrome, sedative toxidrome and both cholinergic and anti-cholinergic syndrome. In next months Roadside to Resus we'll take a look at specific medications of overdose; paracetamol, beta blockers, calcium chan

Welcome back!! So we've had a small summer hiatus and are now back with another Papers of The Month and a jam packed line up of episodes for the rest of the year! We start off this month with a paper which looks to evaluate if there is any benefit on mortality with the use of checklists for endotracheal intubation. Next up we take a look at the factors in cardiac arrest that are most important with regards to prognostication; what should your attention and handover be most focussed upon? Finally we take a look at a paper suggesting that blood gases following ROSC can help us prognosticate for our patient and how this might this affect our practice. Finally keep an eye out for our CPD portal and app which is in the final stages of testing and will be out very shortly!! We'll be keeping you up to date on twitter @TheResusRoom with its launch All references can be found on our webpage at TheResusRoom.co.uk Enjoy! Simon & Rob

So this is our last episode before a small summer hiatus, so it better be a good one! Journals are littered with some great articles at the moment, so we've chosen 3 great papers that cover a number of really important EM topics. Over the last few years more emphasis has been put on a more conservative management on pneumothoraces and following that trend we take a look at a paper evaluating the safety of using a small bore chest drain for the delayed management of haemothoraces, compared with large bore. Next up we take a look at the Injury Severity Score and how well it correlates with the need for life saving interventions in trauma. Lastly there is another great paper on the management of acute atrial fibrillation; comparing electrical cardioversion with the potential use of procainamide prior to shocking. Does it result in fewer patients requiring a shock, and when it comes to the shock is AP pad positioning more effective that anterolateral? We'll b

The more you delve into cardiac arrest, the more it seems that delivering the essentials well is the key to great outcomes; timely recognition, high quality chest compressions, with early and appropriate defibrillation. But is ultrasound in cardiac arrest a layer that we should all be adding in as a standard. It holds the potential to not only prognose outcomes from cardiac arrest, both medical and traumatic, but also to add a level of diagnosis of potentially reversible causes. In this podcast we chat through the evidence surrounding ultrasound in cardiac arrest and consider the practicalities of application during delivery of patient care. Make sure to take a look at the references and resources below. Enjoy! Simon, Rob & James

There are more great pieces of research to enjoy this month! We start off with a paper following on nicely from our Roadside to Resus episode on Stabbing, which looks at the ability of prehospital providers to predict whether stab injuries penetrate to deep structures, or are purely superficial from clinical assessment. Next up we take a look at a paper using high sensitivity troponin and their limit of detection, to assess whether we could be safely discharging patients earlier from the emergency department. Finally we have a look at the results from the RECOVERY group on dexamethasone use in COVID-19, have we got a treatment that can help improve survival in patients admitted with the virus? We'd love to hear any thought or comments you have either on the website or via twitter @TheResusRoom. Enjoy! Simon & Rob

Tranexamic Acid (TXA) has gained a significant amount of attention over the last few years as multiple studies have shown it's utility in decreasing haemorrhage and associated mortality. It has become part of major trauma guidelines, post part haemorrhage protocols and many have adopted it to the management of traumatic brain injury. The findings have been very similar across a spectrum of haemorrhage disease processes and from this further interest in expanding TXA's application to pretty much anything that bleeds. Time from onset of the bleeding has been shown to be important, with it's effect decreasing from time of onset to its administration. Gastro-intestinal bleeding is a significant cause of morbidity and mortality. Previous meta-analyses have shown favourable outcomes for TXA in GI bleeds and many have already adopted TXA into this area of practice, although guidance from NICE does not yet recommend it. HALT-IT is a multi centre, international, randomised double blind controlled trial of near 12,000

Welcome back to June’s Papers Podcast! Traditionally when you’re taught about working a patient up for a potential diagnosis you’ll find a list of signs, symptoms and tests that you need to perform in order to obtain your diagnosis. What that teaching doesn’t tell you is how important each of those aspects is and this month we take a deeper look at this for pneumonia. We look two papers, one focussing on the clinical findings both in signs and symptoms and then a further paper on the importance of biomarker in the diagnosis. We also have a look at a paper which focusses on decreasing time on scene for prehospital patients and the potential benefit of regular time prompts, an idea that may be applicable irrespective of your place and role of work. We’d love to hear any thought or comments you have either on the website or via twitter @TheResusRoom. Enjoy! Simon & Rob

Transfers of patients happen all the time. It's easy to think about transfers as only those that involve an ambulance and moving patients from one hospital to the next, but in reality it's far more extensive than that. We all move patients all the time, whether that be the unwell patient in the upstairs of their house to the ambulance, the patient in the Emergency Department to the CT scanner or another ward, or the more traditional interhosptal transfer. Transfers of patients are inherently high risk times for the patient and having some background knowledge on transfers and a structured approach helps us ensure the best possible care for our patients. In this episode we run through transfers with the help of an expert on the topic, Scott Grier a Consultant in Intensive Care Medicine and Anaesthesia at Southmead Hospital in Bristol, the South West Critical Care Network Lead for Transfer, and a PreHospital Critical Care Doctor with GWAAC. Enjoy! Simon, Rob and James

Welcome to May's papers of the month podcast. Hope you are all well and keeping safe. This month James joins Simon to discuss some of the great work published following the London Trauma Conference, all available in the hyperlinks on the website. First up we have a look at the incidence of prehospital hypotension and hypoxia in patients with suspected traumatic brain injury and the ways in which we might look to mitigate against these complications. Next we have a think about end-tidal CO2 levels and the correlation between these and arterial CO2 readings and discuss what the findings might mean for our practice. Finally we have a look at the incidence of hyperoxia in patients receiving a prehospital emergency anaesthetic in the context of trauma, and consider the effect this might have on our patients and again practice. We'd love to hear any thought or comments you have either on the website or via twitter @TheResusRoom. Enjoy! Simon & James

Fractures of the pelvis are found reasonably often in major trauma, but they’re a really challenging presentation. They are difficult to assess and accurately diagnose in the prehospital setting, mortality rates are high, particularly in patients with haemodynamic instability and there are often associated injuries. Associated mortality from patients with pelvic fractures who reach hospital is reported to be up to 19%, with mortality rates as high as 37% reported in the presence of haemodynamic instability. In this episode we'll run through pelvic injuries, all the way from anatomy and mechanisms of injury, to assessment and management. As always make sure you have a look at the references and supporting material attached in the show notes, and get in touch with any questions or comments and take care of yourselves. Enjoy! Simon, Rob and James

So COVID-19 has produced a multitude of challenges to healthcare providers, the response to these challenges has been phenomenal. One uncertainty is the strategy we should employ for hypoxic respiratory failure and several high quality guidelines have presented conflicting advice for the severely hypoxic patient. The Warwick Clinical Trials Unit has already begun recruiting patients to their RECOVERY-RS trial, which is open for hospitals in the UK to sign up for. This looks at 3 different strategies of respiratory support for patients admitted with suspected or known COVID-19 and hypoxia; namely CPAP, High-flow nasal oxygen and standard care. The trial is funded by the NIHR and supported by the Intensive Care Society. In this episode we get a chance to speak to Bronwen Connolly, one of the investigators of the RECOVERY-RS trial; we discuss the background evidence, the trial design, and when results will be available. As always we’d love to hear any thoughts or comments you have on the website and via twitter,

First we hope you're all well. The world has changed dramatically over the the last few weeks and you are all doing a phenomenal job of providing healthcare under extremely challenging circumstances. We are determined to add a bit of normality to life with a non-COVID-19 papers of the month, full of bad jokes and some EBM. This month we're looking at intubation of acute alcohol intoxication in ED. We take a look at a paper that tries to quantify the risk of patients developing an intracerebral injury when taking antiplatelets and anticoagulants. Finally we have a look at the value of clinical examination and imaging findings in patients with elevated intracranial pressure, how valuable are individual findings? Most importantly take care of yourselves and loved ones and keep fighting the good fight! Simon & Rob

Excellent practice is led by following the high quality evidence based medicine, and there have been a lot of great papers published in the last 12 months! We were kindly invited to the Faculty of Pre Hospital Care Annual Scientific Conference to give a talk on the top 10 papers over the last year. Sadly, but completely understandably, the conference had to be cancelled due to COVID-19. In this podcast we cover the talk which is based on 2 cases that are common to PHEM;a major trauma and a cardiac arrest, and discuss how we can optimise outcomes for our patients in view of the recent evidence on these areas. As always we’d love to hear any thoughts or comments you have on the website and via twitter, and make sure you take a look at the references and guidelines linked below to draw your own conclusions. Enjoy! Simon, Rob & James

We've got a great spread of topics for you this month, stretching all the way from Prehospital Critical Care, to core Emergency Medicine topics. Those of us seeing 'non-specific' complaints will appreciate how difficult they can be to diagnose and manage effectively. We have a look at a paper that helps characterise this group and give some context to their mortality risk. This may well help inform conversations and decision making with this patient group. Recent literature has looked at a more conservative management for traumatic pneumothoraces, but what about those that are spontaneous? The British Thoracic Society has guidelines for how we should deal with them but a recent RCT in the New England Journal of Medicine looks at an even more conservative approach for our patients; can we decrease the number of aspirations and drains that we are performing? Finally we've covered recently a paper on the topic of Prehospital Critical Care on the outcomes for patients in cardiac arrest, in this episode we have a

Figures for the year ending September 2019 showed a 7% rise in offences involving knives or sharp instruments recorded by the police (to 44,771 offences). This is 46% higher than when comparable recording began (year ending March 2011) and the highest on record.  The news is sadly littered with cases of knife crime and terror and whilst we may have thought of stabbings as confined to small pockets of the country, sadly it now seems that we all have or all will be dealing with such cases. The variability in injury and severity is vast from stabbings, however in extremis they are completely time critical, and striking the balance between performing only those life saving interventions on scene, during transport and in ED and getting to the final destination of theatre as quickly as possible. In this podcast we discuss our thoughts on dealing with these cases; from the moment we get that call, all the way through to getting them into theatre. As always we’d love to hear any thoughts or comments you have on the w

Welcome back! Three very different topics and papers for you this month. First up we have a look at the risk/benefit of sending troponins on patients aged 65 years an older when presenting with non-specific complaints; does this help their work up, or is this a classic case of over-testing? Next up we take a look at the causes of our patients presenting to the ED with a reduced level of consciousness, this paper may help inform your differentials and knowledge on the likelihood of different pathologies. Finally, following on from our recent Roadside to Resus episode on Seizures, we take a look at an RCT which compares 3 second line anti epileptics; will this give us the definitive answer over which we should be using? Once again we would love to hear you comments and feedback, and make sure you check out the articles yourselves and come to your own conclusions. Enjoy Simon & Rob

Seizures are defined as a “paroxysmal electrical discharge of the neurones in the brain resulting in a change of function or behaviour”. All of us involved in Emergency Care will encounter patients with seizures which can occur for a number of reasons, with Epilepsy affecting 1 in 100 people in the UK. Being able to identify the cause, terminate ongoing seizures and provide ongoing investigation and care is complicated and of paramount importance, as some of these episodes carry with them a high morbidity and mortality rate. In this episode of Roadside to Resus we run through the following; The scale of the problem Causes of seizures Definition of status epilepticus Different forms of seizures Clinical assessment Investigations Antiepileptic’s Management& guidelines; both Pre and In-hospital RSI for status epilepticus Follow up and guidance As always we’d love to hear any thoughts or comments you have on the website and via twitter, and make sure you take a look at the references and guidelines linked b

Happy New Year!! We hope you've all had a great Christmas and New Year and that you managed to get some well earned time off over the festive period.  2019 saw us publish more insights from lead authors of the latest and most influential studies in Emergency Medicine and Critical Care, and we're really excited to say that we'll be delivering you even more in 2020 with some excellent RCTs, international guidelines and much, much more! This month we've got 3 papers to challenge practice across a wide array of practice. We start off with a paper that evaluates if we can change our d-dimer thresholds in suspected PE's and how many unnecessary work ups and scans that might decrease. Next, following on from our previous Hypothermia podcast, we have a look at a paper which looks at the best rewarming rates in patients with hypothermia, which may change your rewarming strategies.... Finally we have a think about our use of CT scanning in patients who gain a ROSC after cardiac arrest, and consider what benefit full bo

REBOA, ECMO, Thoracotomy? Where should we be focussing our attention in the world of Pre-hospital care? We were lucky enough to be invited to the London Trauma Conference on the Prehospital Day supported by the Norwegian Air Ambulance Foundation. The day focussed on the areas we can make a real impact to the outcomes of our pre-hospital critical care patients. We grabbed a few minutes time of the following speakers to hear their thoughts; Introosseous Access; Jerry Nolan Pre-hospital Blood products; Jostein Hagemo Communication under pressure; Dr Stephen Hearn Pre-hospital Critical Care - what should the near future look like? Dr Stephen Rashford Have a listen and as always we’d love to hear any thoughts or comments you have on the website and via twitter, and take a look at the references below to draw your own conclusions. We'll be back in the new year with monthly episodes of Papers of the Month and Roadside to Resus; have a great Christmas and New Year and we'll speak to you soon! Enjoy! Simon, Rob &