Bruceovesen0618

Out-of-hospital cardiac arrest continues to be a devastating condition despite advances in resuscitation care. Ensuring effective gas exchange must be weighed against the negative impact hyperventilation can have on cardiac physiology and survival. The goals of this narrative review are to evaluate the available evidence regarding the role of ventilation in out-of-hospital cardiac arrest resuscitation and to provide recommendations for future directions. Ensuring successful airway patency is fundamental for effective ventilation. The airway management approach should be based on professional skill level and the situation faced by rescuers. Evidence has explored the influence of different ventilation rates, tidal volumes, and strategies during out-of-hospital cardiac arrest; however, other modifiable factors affecting out-of-hospital cardiac arrest ventilation have limited supporting data. Capmatinib Researchers have begun to explore the impact of ventilation in adult out-of-hospital cardiac arrest outcomes, further stressing its importance in cardiac arrest resuscitation management. Capnography and thoracic impedance signals are used to measure ventilation rate, although these strategies have limitations. Existing technology fails to reliably measure real-time clinical ventilation data, thereby limiting the ability to investigate optimal ventilation management. An essential step in advancing cardiac arrest care will be to develop techniques to accurately and reliably measure ventilation parameters. These devices should allow for immediate feedback for out-of-hospital practitioners, in a similar way to chest compression feedback. Once developed, new strategies can be established to guide out-of-hospital personnel on optimal ventilation practices.Ketamine is a unique medication with a long history of use in the emergency department. Out-of-hospital indications for ketamine have been explored and are currently expanding in some systems. This article provides background on ketamine history and pharmacology, its use in the hospital environment and possible applications for emergency medical services usage of this medication. Contraindications and adverse reactions are discussed to provide education on the nuances of ketamine administration and mitigation strategies. Out-of-hospital indications for ketamine are discussed including airway management, rapid sequence induction, analgesia, sedation, and treatment of excited delirium.The transportation of mental health patients between facilities by emergency medical services personnel poses a unique risk to both patients and their providers. Increasingly, common injuries are occurring and difficulties are arising during this transition in care. Proximal causes exist that could be addressed to help mitigate many of the complexities that occur during this shift in care. Patient safety, quality of care, and provider safety are all at risk if improvements are not made and problems not identified or rectified.

To validate the discrimination and classification accuracy of a novel acute dyspnea scale for identifying outcomes of out-of-hospital patients with acute dyspnea.

Prospective observational population-based study in the North Denmark Region. We included patients from July 1, 2017 to September 24, 2019 assessed as having acute dyspnea by the emergency dispatcher or by emergency medical services (EMS) personnel. Patients rated dyspnea using the 11-point acute dyspnea scale. The primary outcomes were hospitalization >2 days, ICU admission within 48 hours of ambulance run, and 30-day mortality. We used 5-fold cross-validation and area under receiver operating curves (AUC) to assess predictive properties of the acute dyspnea scale score alone and combined with vital data, age, and sex.

We included 3144 EMS patients with reported dyspnea. Median acute dyspnea scale score was 7 (interquartile range 5 to 8). The outcomes were 1966 (63%) hospitalized, 164 (5%) ICU stay, and 224 (9%) died within 30 days of callHowever, the dyspnea scale may be beneficial as performance measure and indicator of out-of-hospital care.

Accidental hypothermic cardiac arrest, an involuntary drop in core body temperature resulting in cardiopulmonary arrest, is linked to 1500 deaths annually. We highlight the challenges with the treatment of accidental hypothermic cardiac arrest and describe improved preparations necessary for an integrated health system to care for similar patients.

Emergency medical services (EMS) were dispatched to a 34-year-old female who had been missing for several hours during a January snowfall. The patient was found unconscious over an embankment. The patient was found with a weak carotid pulse and two empty bottles of clozapine, an atypical antipsychotic. The EMS crew extricated the patient, performed a rapid trauma assessment, passive rewarming, and airway management. During transport, the patient suffered a ventricular fibrillation cardiac arrest, received defibrillation, and advanced life support measures. Resuscitative efforts continued in the emergency department while the treatment team addressed environmentactive rewarming and in-hospital ECMO. Accidental hypothermic cardiac arrest is a reversible state; prompt and correct treatment allows for a high probability of a favorable neurologic outcome.Out-of-hospital cardiac arrest survival continues to be dismal with the only recent improvement being that of extracorporeal cardiopulmonary resuscitation (E-CPR) or cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR), augmented by extracorporeal membrane oxygenation (ECMO). Minimizing time until initiation of E-CPR is critical to improve neurologically intact survival. Bringing E-CPR to the patient rather than requiring transport to the emergency department may increase the number of patients eligible for E-CPR and the chances for a good outcome. We developed a out-of-hospital E-CPR (P-ECMO) program that includes the novel use of a hand-crank and emergency medical services (EMS) providers as first assistants. Here, we report the first P-ECMO procedure in North America for refractory ventricular fibrillation involving a 65-year-old male patient who was cannulated in the field within the recommended 60-minute low-flow window and transported to our institution where he underwent coronary stenting. Details of program design and the procedure used may allow other systems to consider implementation of a P-ECMO program.