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The Infectious Disease Society of America (IDSA)/SHEA released new  clostridium difficile (c diff) guidelines in 2017.

 

Rosh Review Emergency Board Review Questions

An 85-year-old woman who was recently treated with ciprofloxacin for a urinary tract infection presents to the emergency department with diarrhea and lightheadedness. Her vital signs are heart rate 95 bpm, blood pressure 84/50 mm Hg, and temperature 38.9°C. Laboratory studies are notable for a white blood cell count of 19,000 and creatinine of 2.8 mg/dL. On abdominal X-ray, the transverse width of the patient’s colon is 7 cm. Chest X-ray and urinalysis are unremarkable. In addition to fluid resuscitation, what is the most appropriate treatment for this patient?

A. Intravenous and rectal vancomycin

B. Intravenous vancomycin and oral ciprofloxacin

C. Oral metronidazole and surgical consultation

D. Oral vancomycin and surgical consultation

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D. This patient presents with severe, life-threatening Clostridium difficile colitis. This is evidenced by a history of severe diarrhea preceded by recent antibiotic use. When the normal microbial flora of the colon is disrupted by exposure to antibiotics, Clostridium difficile can opportunistically dominate. It produces several toxins, which cause inflammation of the colon (colitis). Clinically, these patients present with watery diarrhea and crampy abdominal pain. Fever is often present, particularly in severe cases. This is a severe case of colitis due to the white blood cell count greater than 15,000, impaired renal function and presence of severe sepsis. This patient should receive empiric treatment with oral vancomycin. Given the dilated colon on abdominal X-ray, this patient likely has toxic megacolon and requires early surgical consultation to evaluate for surgical colectomy (if condition is unresponsive to medical management). Clostridium difficile is a species of gram-positive spore-forming bacteria that can exist in the human colon. A novel macrocyclic antibiotic called fidaxomicin was recently approved for the treatment of Clostridium difficile colitis. However, there is a lack of evidence to support its use in life-threatening illness.

The use of oral metronidazole (C) is appropriate for mild infections, but its use in severe disease is strongly discouraged. Intravenous vancomycin (A and B) is not a recommended treatment for Clostridium difficile colitis, as bactericidal concentrations are not achieved in the colon. Moreover, ciprofloxacin is a cause of Clostridium difficile colitis not a treatment. Rectal vancomycin can be considered as an adjunct to oral vancomycin when ileus is present.

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We present….the Faust-Westafer Central Theorem of Emergency Medicine.

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We cover Free Open Access Medical Education (FOAM) on mass casualty incidents, an unfortunate reality in the current United States climate (and elsewhere).  There is a must read (truly, emergency providers really should read this) in EP Monthly by Dr.Kevin Menes, “How One Las Vegas ED Saved Hundreds of Lives After the Worst Mass Shooting in U.S. History”. He details his process in running the Emergency Department that evening. Some of our favorite pearls

• Plan ahead and rehearse. This means both mass casualty drills and mental rehearsal. We do this with many things in emergency medicine (thinking about how we would handle rare and critical procedures or disease processes.
• Prepare once you have the heads up to help mitigate system induced bottlenecks.  When a mass casualty incident is expected, call for help. This means, extra staff to transport patients and techs and nurses. This also may mean calling in all trauma surgeons, anesthesiologists, and emergency providers. Additionally, bring all stretchers and wheelchairs to the ambulance bay. Consider calling for items in bulk. For example, all vials of paralytic, all chest tube trays from central supply, or large quantities of blood products.
• Triage – according to the textbook the most senior person should be doing this. In Vegas, Dr.Menes discusses how he was needed in the and turned triage over to a senior nurse who had been assisting him in the process to that point.

We cover pearls from other great resources include a post on the St. Emlyn’s blog, “Mass Casualty Incidents: Lessons from the AAST” and a free EBMedicine article on ballistic injuries. We recommend this article by Dr. Kellerman on the reasons for the lack of firearm research in the United States.

We cover core content on triage and ED treatment pearls using Rosen’s Emergency Medicine Chapter 192 and Tintinalli Chapter 5 as guides

 

Rosh Review Emergency Board Review Questions

A massive explosion occurred at a nearby automotive plant injuring hundreds of employees. You are called to help as part of the disaster team. You are assigned to work on scene triaging patients according to the Simple Triage and Rapid Treatment (START) protocol. Your first victim is found unconscious with significant head and facial trauma. The patient has no spontaneous respirations. What is the most appropriate next step?

A, Assign the patient a black tag

B. Intubate the patient with an endotracheal tube

C. Oxygenate the patient with a bag-valve mask

D. Reposition the patient’s airway

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You should reposition the patient’s airway. In mass casualty situations, emergency personnel often use the Simple Triage and Rapid Treatment (START) technique that allows for rapid assessment of patient’s respirations, perfusion and mental status (RPM). Anyone that is able to walk is asked to move away from the incident site and is assigned a green tag (walking wounded). At this point emergency personnel then quickly assesses the remaining patient’s respirations, pulse and mental status, in order to assign red (immediate), yellow (delayed) or black (deceased) tags. The first step is to assess the patient’s respirations. If they have no spontaneous respirations, you make one attempt to reposition the airway. If there is no improvement, they are assigned a black tag. If they are breathing greater then 30 breaths/minute, they are assigned a red tag. If respirations are less than 30 breaths/minute, then you assess the patient’s perfusion. If their radial pulse is absent or their capillary refill is over 2 seconds, they are given a red tag. If the have a radial pulse or capillary refill less than 2 seconds, you assess their mental status. If they are able to follow commands they are assigned a yellow tag. If they cannot follow commands, they are assigned a red tag.

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We bring you pearl from the American College of Emergency Physicians (ACEP) 2017 Scientific Assembly.

Pearls on H. Pylori from: It’s Alimentary – Poo-Pourri of Conditions From the Mouth to Rectum – Dr. Adebayo, Dr. Batra, Dr. Bavokek

References :

1. Rosen’s 9th ed
2. Meltzer et al. Ann Emerg Med. 2015 Aug;66(2):131-9.
3. Meltzer et al. West J Emerg Med. 2013 May; 14(3): 278–282.

Emerging Infections: Zika and Its Friends – Dr. Joan Noelker

High Yield Toxicology – Dr Erickson, Dr Traub, Dr. Perrone

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We bring you pearl from the American College of Emergency Physicians (ACEP) 2017 Scientific Assembly.

Pediatric Pitfalls – Dr. Tim Horeczko

Critical Care Literature Updates – Dr. Michael Winters

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In this episode, we summarize recent literature we feel is high yield, important, or frequently discussed in emergency medicine. As always, we encourage you to read the papers and not FOAM it alone.

Antibiotics and abscesses – Daum et al

FAST in hemodynamically stable patients –  Holmes et al

Haloperidol in gastroparesis – Roldan et al and Ramirez et al

Ignoring PERC – Buchanan et al

Steroids in non-asthma/COPD lower respiratory tract infections – Hay et alENDAO – Caputo et al

Gender pay gap persists in academic EM (and it’s not due to hours, rank, or roles) – Madsen et al

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We are in Berlin for #dasSMACC and have lots of pearls to share from the speakers at this amazing conference.  Talks will be released for free on the SMACC podcast over the next year, but this podcast holds some pearls that we thought couldn’t wait.

Overall trope of the conference….

for more on the Dunning-Kruger effect check out this post

Drs. Jacob Avila and Ben Smith on Airway Ultrasound

Check out this 7-minute video on ETT placement confirmation using ultrasound

Dr. James Rippey on Point of Care Ultrasound Incidental Findings

Dr. Jack Iwashyna on Persistent Critical Care

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We interrupt our normal core content to cover an important topic highlighted in JAMA’s recent article, “Medical Texting and Protected Health Information. What is permitted?“

Other pearls:

• Live tweeting is dangerous (exposes dates, potentially identifiable events)
• If in doubt, leave it out

Reference:

Department of Health and Human Services. “Guidance Regarding Methods for De-identification of Protected Health Information in Accordance with the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) Privacy Rule.” November 16, 2015

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The new Surviving Sepsis Campaign Guidelines are out in Critical Care Medicine.  The biggest change is the change in the definition of sepsis, which now uses the language of Sepsis 3.0, introduced in 2016. Other significant changes include dropping protocolized care (ex: early goal directed therapy), and recommending against combination antibiotic therapy (double coverage) for a single pathogen [1,2].

Bonus discussion on new validation study of qSOFA

References:

1. Opal SM, Rubenfeld GD, Poll T Van Der, Vincent J, Angus DC. The Third International Consensus Definitions for Sepsis and Septic Shock (Sepsis-3). 2016;315(8):801–10.
2. Rhodes A, Evans LE, Alhazzani W, et al. Surviving Sepsis Campaign: International Guidelines for Management of Sepsis and Septic Shock: 2016. Crit Care Med [Internet] 2017;1.
3. Keh D, Trips E, Marx G, et al. Effect of Hydrocortisone on Development of Shock Among Patients With Severe Sepsis: The HYPRESS Randomized Clinical Trial. JAMA. 2016;316(17):1775-1785.
4. Seymour CW, Liu VX, Iwashyna TJ, et al. Assessment of Clinical Criteria for Sepsis. Jama [Internet] 2016;315(8):762.
5. Freund Y, LeMachatti N, Krastinova E.Prognostic Accuracy of Sepsis-3 Criteria for In-Hospital Mortality Among Patients W.ith Suspected Infection Presenting to the Emergency Department. JAMA. 2017;317(3):267-268.

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Article highlights of 2016

Sepsis 3.0

Singer M, Deutschman CS, Seymour CW, et al: The Sepsis Definitions Task Force The Third International Consensus Definitions for Sepsis and Septic Shock (Sepsis-3).

• This iteration of sepsis discarded systemic inflammatory response syndrome (SIRS), noting it’s poor discriminatory ability.  Further, these authors sought to define sepsis as a dysregulated response to infection, not just a normal response to infection (i.e. fever and tachycardia are normal responses to infection and therefore are, alone, not evidence of sepsis).

The quick SOFA score (qSOFA) also came out in hopes it “provides simple bedside criteria to identify adult patients with suspected infection who are likely to have poor outcomes.”  It is not part of the sepsis definition  but may help in identifying those that will die or have a 3 day ICU stay.  Studies looking at the performance of qSOFA applied retrospectively to data sets have not been promising [1,2].

Back Up Head Elevated Intubation

Khandelwal et al. Head-elevated Patient Positioning Decreases Complications of Emergent Tracheal Intubation in the Ward and Intensive Care Unit. Anesthesia and Analgesia. Apr 2016.

Ketorolac Dose

Motov, S, Yasavolian, M, Likourezos, A, et al. Comparison of Intravenous Ketorolac at Three Single-Dose Regimens for Treating Acute Pain in the Emergency Department. .Ann Emerg Med. 2016 Dec 16.

Pulmonary Embolism in Syncope 

Prandoni et al. Prevalence of Pulmonary Embolism among Patients Hospitalized for Syncope.   N Engl J Med 2016; 375:1524-1531. This trial is probably one of the most over-reacted to trials of 2016.  News outlets, both by lay media and for health professionals overstated the claims of this trial.

What the trial actually did…

Out of Hospital Cardiac Arrest Prognostication

Jabre et al. Early Identification of Patients With Out-of-Hospital Cardiac Arrest With No Chance of Survival and Consideration for Organ Donation.   Intern Med. 2016 Dec 6;165(11):770-778

ALTE (Apparent Life Threatening Event) is out, replaced with a new definition and classification, BRUE (Brief Resolved Unexplained Event).

Tieder JS, Bonkowsky JL, Etzel RA, Franklin WH, Gremse DA, Herman B et al. Subcommittee on Apparent Life Threatening Events. Brief Resolved Unexplained Events (Formerly Apparent Life-Threatening Events) and Evaluation of Lower-Risk Infants: Executive Summary.  Pediatrics. 2016

References:

1. Churpek MM, Snyder A, Han X et al. qSOFA, SIRS, and Early Warning Scores for Detecting Clinical Deterioration in Infected Patients Outside the ICU. Am J Respir Crit Care Med. 2016. [article]
2. Brabrand M, Havshøj U, Graham CA. Validation of the qSOFA score for identification of septic patients: A retrospective study. European Journal of Internal Medicine. 36:e35-e36. 2016. [article]