ACEP Tues

These are just the lectures I attended; there are others.

Today’s lectures started with “Great Cases in Emergency Medicine”. This is always a fun topic, and can be very educational. The presenter is an accomplished EP and is academic faculty, so it’s no surprise she was good at her presentations. The three cases we covered were quite enjoyable, and as with most of the really fun EM cases they were toxicology.

The next was “Commonly Ordered Lab Tests” by one of the leading thinkers in EM (yes, there are thinkers). Mostly he railed against getting PTT’s (good point and good literature to support its exclusion except in very specific cases), he thinks we should be ordering more Magnesiums (something to consider). Time well spent.

Then onto “Acute Coronary Syndromes”, a topic I went to because I wanted to hear what this weeks’ recommendations from the oh-so-scientific cards community are. I won’t bore you with the details, but this talk was aimed at a very very small subset of my chest pain practice, but at least with those now I know what to discuss with the cardiologist.

Then onto ‘articles that should affect your practice’, again by the thinker. Except for one new treatment (Ivermectin for scabies?), it’s things I think most already knew. (Except for better coma survival in people who we make hypothermic after their cardiac arrest. Hmmmm).

Then onto a wound management update, where I learned one helpful trick (use a sterile glove for finger lacs; after the wound is prepped, apply the sterile glove sterilly to the pt’s hand, then just nip the tip of the glove and roll it back over the finger: viola! Really sterile field and a finger tourniquet that works. I’ll be using that, soon.

Aah well, break’s over. Probably done with blogging this thing today, maybe for the trip. There’s too much to do here other than sit on the computer with a dialup-connection (thanks, Hyatt, for not having any broadband or WiFi available).