LITFL Review 141

Welcome to the 141st LITFL Review! Your regular and reliable source for the highest highlights, sneakiest sneak peeks and loudest shout-outs from the webbed world of emergency medicine and critical care. Each week the LITFL team casts the spotlight on the blogosphere’s best and brightest, and deliver a bite-sized chunk of Global FOAM.

The Most Fair Dinkum Ripper Beauts of the Week

Do risk factors matter? They do to us but perhaps not to our patients. Simon Carley discusses the importance of risk factors in emergency presentations. My favorite statement – “I am a probablastician not a diagnostician.” [AS]

AmboFOAM links us to an extremely challenging ECG quiz. Slog through all 36 difficult ECGs to see how you stack up against EM physicians and cardiologists, and what ECG features push you toward a false positive or negative. [MG]

The Best of #FOAMed Emergency Medicine

• Wellens’ waves continue to be a critical but under-recognized ECG finding indicative of proximal LAD stenosis. Stephen Smith recounts an unusual case of Wellens’ waves that appear and disappear. [AS]
• Anatomic variants in coronary anatomy can cause varying EKG findings. Learn about one of them this week from The Blunt Dissection. [MG]
• Are you using “the Seattle switch” during CPR? Read about it in a brief post by Tom Bouthillet of the EMS 12-Lead Blog. Tom also outlines the entire pit crew CPR model in this post. [MG]
• The Annals of Emergency Medicine has posted the audio summary of their June 2014 issue, featuring commentary from David Newman and Ashley Shreves. [MG]
• Prehospital and retrieval medicine has it’s own set of particular challenges. Minh Le Cong and Geoff Ramin feature a post on the preparation of the critical patient for aeromedical transport. [MG]
• Minh also featured two aeromedicalretrieval cases this week. [MG]
• Dr. Stephen Smith reminds us of the importance of ST depression and T-wave inversion in aVL on the ECG blog. [AS]
• The famed REBEL EM blog will begin hosting it’s own podcast. Listen to the introduction. [MG]

The Best of #FOAMcc Critical Care

• The dust still hasn’t settled from the TTM trial. Scott Weingart interviews Niklas Nielsen, the lead author of the trial. [MG]
• What is PEEP and how do you use it? Taming the SRU features a great introduction to the use of PEEP. [MG]
• London’s Air Ambulance reported on twitter that they have successfully performed the world’s first pre-hospital REBOA. For more on REBOA, see this EMCrit post and podcast. [MG]
• RAGE sessions 4 is finally here! Tune in for a great discussion on RV infarction and failure, human factors in the resus room, and more! Don’t forget the miniRAGE on the ProCESS trial, also released this week. (iTunes / RSS) [MG]
• Two great SMACC talks from Cliff Reid were released covering Resuscitation Dogmalysis and When Should Resuscitation Stop? Both are well worth your time! (iTunes / RSS) [MG]

The Best of #FOAMped Pediatrics

• Intrigued by constipated kids? Who isn’t. Tessa Davis and the Don’t Forget the Bubbles crew created a 5-day impaction-fest. Check out basics, understanding constipation, treatment, evidence and parental advice. [AS]
• Tick paralysis. It’s not very common, but you are going to feel very silly if you miss that tick. Sean Fox on Pediatric EM Morsels takes a look. [TRD]

LITFL Weekly Review Team

Reference Sources and Reading List

• #FOAMed – #FOAMcc – #FOAMres
• #FOAMped – #FOAMtox – #FOAMus
• #FOAMim – #FOANed