Case: A 40-year-old man with a history of hepatitis C and alcoholism presents to the ED with dental caries. A brief history and unremarkable physical examination is documented. The patient is discharged and fills his prescription for hydrocodone 5 mg/acetaminophen 500 mg (1-2 tablets every 4-6 hours as needed, #25).
Michael Blaivas, MD, RDMS, professor of emergency medicine in the Department of Emergency Medicine at Northside Hospital Forsyth in Cumming, GA, says he has reviewed multiple cases involving consultants refusing to come to the ED, with a bad outcome resulting. "Mostly, this means an unhappy patient, but in critically ill ones can mean a lawsuit," he says.
In a prior study, investigators at Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center linked intraoperative contamination of patients' IV stopcocks with an increase in patient mortality.
A recent examination of the Medicare database illustrates that survival rates after in-hospital cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) remained unchanged from 1992 to 2005.