Tamingthesru
Grand Rounds Summary 9.20.17
This week's grand rounds started off with our EMS team represented by Dr. McMullan updating us on new EMS stroke protocols, an upcoming trial for pre-hospital ketamine use, as well as a refresher on notification calls. This was followed by Dr. Shaw, who made his grand rounds lecture debut discussing the diagnostic and clinical utility of lactate. Drs. Harty and Toth then went mano-a-mano in another installment of the CPC lecture series, during which they discuss the presentation, workup and management of carotid cavernous fistula. Dr. Gorder then presented her clinical soap box, using the example of NG tube placement for SBO as a platform for addressing the impact of dogma within medicine. Our peds EM colleagues then steered the ship for the final 2 hours, discussing 2 oral boards cases (fussiness in a newborn and HSP) as well as putting on a pediatric trauma simulation.
The Future of Airway Management?
What is the future of airway management in the ED? How can we make our practice more effective and more efficient? In this journal club recap, we focus on 2 topics emerging in the literature - flush rate O2 for pre-oxygenation and head of bed elevation during intubation.
Hyperlactatemia in Critical Illness: History, Mechanisms, and the “Great Debate"
Since the turn of the century, lactate has become a mainstay in emergency medicine and critical care laboratories. Some clinicians may hate it, others may love it, but very few can feign apathy on the subject. The utility of lactate in the emergency department and the ICU in guiding resuscitations, predicting mortality, or identifying occult critical illness continues to be discussed in the literature, most fervently in the realm of sepsis. But what are the humble beginnings of this molecule? Most fundamentally, how is lactate generated in the setting of critical illness? And how did it come to be so firmly embedded in our understanding of the pathophysiology of critically ill patients?