Tamingthesru
Transient Synovitis or Septic Arthritis? Evaluating the Kocher Criteria
The sore hip in the pediatric patient is a complaint that is important to approach with caution as the repercussions of missing the diagnosis of septic arthritis can be life threatening.
Necrotizing Fasciitis and the Spectrum of Soft Tissue Infections
In this post, we discuss necrotizing fasciitis and whether the LRINEC score is a useful decision-aid for the emergency physician when this disease is suspected.
What's in a Blood Gas? VBG vs ABG
You’re deep into a busy shift. Pushing yourself to see more volume towards the end of the year, you find yourself actively managing 8 patients. You have 2 patients with difficulty breathing you believe have COPD exacerbations and 1 patient with a history of T1DM who has a critical high finger stick blood sugar and ketones in their urine. You send VBGs as part of the work up for all these patients finding hypercarbia for the patients who have COPD exacerbations and a significant metabolic acidosis in the patient with T1DM confirming your diagnosis of DKA. You are in the process of admitting these patients when you face questions from your colleagues in-house as to why you didn’t perform an ABG on these patients?