Posts in Critical Care
Treatment of Psychosomatic Pain in the Emergency Department with Sub-dissociative Dose Ketamine

Psychosomatic pain is a common Emergency Department (ED) complaint that may often frustrate both patients and providers. While patients struggle to find relief, providers may struggle to produce it using conventional modalities available in the ED. Significant functional impairment may be present, prompting high resource utilization, increased costs, and inappropriate medical investigations…

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Intensive Care Unit (ICU) Electronic Medical Record (EMR) and Rounding Efficiency for the Emergency Medicine (EM) Resident

Months of ICU rotations are required for United States (US) Emergency Medicine (EM) residents. As EM residents, we can feel out of place or less efficient than we are used to in this environment since we work primarily in a very different model and with a very different electronic medical record (EMR) setup…

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Rethinking Acute Traumatic Central Cord Syndrome

The patient in this case is a 64-year-old male with a history of hypertension, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, rheumatic heart disease, and a previous C3-C6 laminectomy and fusion who presented to the Emergency Department (ED) with a chief complaint of new-onset, bilateral upper extremity weakness and paresthesia following an unwitnessed fall…

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Caring for the Pregnant Trauma Patient

Trauma affects an estimated 8% of all pregnancies and is the leading cause of non-obstetric maternal morbidity and mortality. Pregnancy can complicate the evaluation of a trauma patient, and we must be aware of the normal anatomic and physiologic changes that occur during pregnancy, as well as the adjustments that must be made to our trauma algorithm. This post will review the keys to managing a pregnant trauma patient, as well as injuries and interventions specific to pregnancy…

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