Articles Tagged With:
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Is It Safe and Effective to Use Low-Dose Opioids Long Term to Treat Refractory RLS?
A review of two-year longitudinal data regarding efficacy and dose stability in refractory restless legs syndrome (RLS) patients treated with low-dose opioids shows that patients do not escalate their opiate dosage and that there is clinical and therapeutic stability in treating RLS with this therapeutic regimen.
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Does One Negative Troponin Measurement Rule Out Acute Coronary Syndrome?
Using a common clinical chest pain algorithm plus a point-of-care troponin measurement for low-risk patients, researchers reported significantly lower healthcare costs. Also, this approach did not seem to result in more major adverse cardiovascular events.
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Unexpected Low Voltage on an ECG
A registry study of hypertrophic cardiomyopathy (HCM) patients and elite athletes in Italy revealed low voltage on ECG is not uncommon in HCM and may be a marker for more left ventricular scarring on cardiac imaging — and a poor prognosis.
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Rezafungin Injection (Rezzayo)
Rezafungin can be prescribed to treat candidemia and invasive candidiasis in patients age 18 years or older with limited or no alternative options.
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Stroke and a Wide QRS
The ECG in the figure is from an older man who presented with an acute stroke. He denied chest pain. Why is there QRS widening? What might be the clinical implications?
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Give Actionable Incidental Findings Proper Attention
New recommendations help health systems implement processes that will preserve patient safety. These tips aim to make it easy for providers to do right by their patients when clinicians identify actionable incidental findings.
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Malpractice Lawsuits Allege ED Missed Intracranial Aneurysms
Failure to image patients is a relatively frequent cause of litigation, but it should be seen in context. It is not so much incorrect interpretations of imaging studies; rather, failure to consider the possibility of an aneurysm, resulting in an inadequate workup, is a more common allegation.
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Does a Clinical Decision Aid Constitute the Legal Standard of Care?
Each emergency physician should undertake the appropriate medical approach to evaluating a patient, regardless of any recommended course of action. The medical record should support using the recommended path or justify another course of action.
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Did EP Decide Not to Follow Recommendation of Computer Decision Aid?
The medical record should demonstrate the clinician saw the recommendation, thought about it, and decided what to do. The clinician still may be wrong. But now, it is more of a judgment error than simple carelessness.
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Med/Mal Claims Focus on Decision Aid Findings from ECGs, Radiology Tests
If the radiologist does not address computer findings directly, the ED clinician is left to make assumptions about what the radiologist has found significant or insignificant. If radiologists are not routinely addressing computer findings, emergency providers will spend resources attempting to sift through reports and images, trying to rule in or out what the computer has found. Radiologists should acknowledge computer findings, and comment on why or why not the finding is accurate and significant to the patient’s care.