Reader Steve Carroll passed along this recent case report from the Annals of Emergency Medicine. It’s behind a paywall, so let’s summarize. What happened A young adult male was shot three ...
Man’s leaning against a wall. He doesn’t move for hours. Just stands there not moving. Finally, someone says, “You been here all day — don’t you have anything to do?” “I’m doin...
https://emsbasics.com/2013/01/09/staying-in-place-compensation-and-endpoints/
Any decent EMT can take the austere equipment he’s got and use it to craft all manner of weird and wonderful solutions for the challenges of prehospital medicine. Of course, doing this means un...
To wrap up our story on shock, let’s discuss how to recognize it. We all have some idea what shock looks like. Like many pathologies, its loudest early markers are actually indirect — we’ll...
https://emsbasics.com/2012/01/22/understanding-shock-ix-assessment-and-recognition/
The last time we talked, we learned about the arguments in favor of non-blood fluid resuscitation. What are the arguments against it? The “blow out the clots” argument The vascular system ...
https://emsbasics.com/2012/01/10/understanding-shock-vii-negatives-of-fluid-resuscitation/
So we know now that in any hemorrhagic shock, controlling the bleeding is step one, and restoring the supply of something resembling blood is step two. Should we also consider infusing some other...
https://emsbasics.com/2012/01/04/understanding-shock-vi-fluid-resuscitation/
So let’s say we’ve stopped the bleeding as best we can. Now what? The patient is still low on blood, and we know about all the problems this will cause. So shouldn’t we try and give them so...
https://emsbasics.com/2012/01/02/understanding-shock-v-blood-transfusion/
The common thread that defines the shock process is inflammation. As we know, inflammation is the body’s response to damage. When things go wrong, when trouble calls, we ring the bell for in...
https://emsbasics.com/2011/12/27/understanding-shock-iii-pathophysiology/
. . . the rude unhinging of the machinery of life. Samuel Gross When we say shock, what do we mean? First, to be clear, we’re not talking about “shock” as in “I’m shocked by all this...
https://emsbasics.com/2011/12/22/understanding-shock-ii-what-the-what/
Syncope. To a fresh-faced student, it’s a snappy word for fainting. To someone with experience, it’s a heavy sigh, because we take a lot of calls for “syncope” and most of them are no big...
https://emsbasics.com/2011/11/02/differentiating-syncope-a-few-pearls/