LITFL Review 159

Welcome to the 159th 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

This Will Revolutionize Education is a much-watch video for all educators at any level, on the role of innovation and the role of the teacher. [AS]

The Best of #FOAMed Emergency Medicine

• Amal Mattu reviews a case of a 17-year-old with a wide irregular rhythm and discusses the proper management, as well as changes to the ACC/AHA guidelines, for the treatment of atrial fibrillation. [AS}
• Should every patient who presents to the ED with chest pain get an US? Steve Smith argues that the answer may be yes. [AS]
• Mucormycosis is rare but deadly; the perfect storm of Emergency Medicine diseases. Andy Neill reviews the basics of the disease and some features that can help with diagnosis. [AS]
• Here’s a great review of Ludwig’s angina from the Mayo Clinic’s EMBlog. [SO]

The Best of #FOAMcc Critical Care

• Placing a catheter to decompress a tension pneumothorax? Consider the 5th intercostal space in the midaxillarly line instead of the traditional 2nd intercostal space, midclavicular line as your site of placement. [AS]
• An excellent review on the utility of nimodipine for prevention of cerebral infarction after subarachnoid hemorrhage, from Intensive. [AS]
• Intubated patients can be safely taken off a ventilator once they are awake and spontaneously breathing, right? The team from The Bottom Line reviews the 2008 ABC trial and tell us whether this is true. [SO]
• We’ve heard it many times before: the central venous pressure is useless unless you’re a horse. Now,  Jon-Emile Kenny mounts a robust defense of this much-maligned waveform in his new post on ICU physiology in a 1000 words. [SO]
• Josh Farkas’s great series on preserving renal function in the critically ill continues, with a mind-bending post on renal vascular haemodynamics in sepsis. [SO]
• The UK Intensive Care Society has launched itself into the blogosphere. Read a great article by Dr Tim Gould, who asks a simple question: Low Tidal Volume Ventilation works, so why don’t we deliver it consistently? [SO]
• The New England Journal of Medicine recently ran a series on acid-base abnormalities. They currently have an open forum where experts opine on many things, including the indications (or not) for bicarbonate use in severe acidosis. Have a look. [SO]

The Best of #FOAMtox Toxicology

• Tox guru Bob Hoffman discusses a  number of Controversies in Medical Toxicology including GI lavage, hyperbarics in CO poisoning and more. [AS]

The Best of #FOAMus Ultrasound

• Mike and Matt discuss how ultrasound guided CPR can save lives. Excellent cutting edge resuscitation. [AS]
• Some amazing images from Ultrasound of the Week 28: a 13 year old boy with fever and cough. Can you work out the diagnosis? [SO]
• Echo.guru is a new #FOAMus site that focuses on little tips and tricks to getting perfect images. Get started with this post on the best interspace for the PLAX view. (thanks to Sharon Mckay for the tip) [SO]

LITFL Weekly Review Team

Reference Sources and Reading List

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