LITFL Review 167

Welcome to the 167th 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

Janu-airway continues over at EMcrit with things Scott Weingart learned at the NYC airway course. [MG]

The Best of #FOAMed Emergency Medicine

• Should men and women have different cutoff values to define a positive troponin? EM Lit of Note discusses a recent article in the BMJ (Free Open Access Article!). [AS]
• Small bowel obstruction: what do we look for in the history and examination and what does it mean? Brush up on your diagnostic skills with this post from SinaiEMand complemented fantastically by FOAMcast’s post and podcast on the same topic. [SL]
• St. Emlyn’s discusses an update to the MACS decision instrument for stratifying chest pain patients in the ED. [AS]
• Prehospital Ultrasound, transfers and prehospital TXA are all discussed in this great podcast from the London Trauma Conference, with David McCreary interviewing Stefan Mazur following the lectures he gave at this conference. [SL]
• Ken, Matt and Mike discuss the JAMA rational clinical examination on ectopic pregnancy this week on the SGEM. [AS]
• Scott Aberegg from Medical Evidence blog has a thoughtful article on theTherapeutic Paradox: What’s right for the population may not be right for the patient. [SO]
• Cardiopulmonary resuscitation physiology isn’t as straightforward as it appears. PulmCCM discusses two theories of how CPR works and the evidence behind them. [AS]
• The January podcast edition of the Annals of Emergency Medicine podcast resource is out. Topics include: atrial fibrillation, the new ACEP policy of thoracic aortic dissection, ketamine, propofol, and geriatric malnutrition and triage. [MG]
• Podcasts from The Hippo EM Resident Call Room (iTunes link) recently featured two episodes on pearls for L&D in the ED, and treating pain in pregnant patients. [MG]

The Best of #FOAMcc Critical Care

• Nice review from the University of Washington on the role of epinephrine in OHCA. [AS]
• Josh Farkas discusses three myths about saline, Plasmalyte, and Normosol in this fluid and acid-base heavy essay. [SO]
• The Bottom Line review the recent trial on Vitamin D Supplementation in Intensive Care, and it’s up to their usual excellent standards. [SO]
• With critical care staff burnout becoming an ever-increasing issue, Ian Miller from the Nurse Path discusses a study on implementing a resilience training programme for critical care nurses. There’s hope out there for us all… [SO]

The Best of #FOAMus Ultrasound

• Academic Life in Emergency Medicine offers a nice succinct paucis verbis (PV) card for ocular ultrasound. [AS]
• Here’s a great post from the Echo Guru on why LV wall thickness is not the same as LV hypertrophy. Useful for critical care echo practitioners. [SO]
• Echo.Guru has a fantastic set of pearls on probe/transducer damage, sterilisation, and lifespan. [SO]
• Justin Mandeville from ICMWK has posted a beautiful succinct summary of the European Association of Cardiovascular Imaging’s recent consensus guidelines on the use of echocardiography in the acute setting. [SO]
• Another great Ultrasound of the Week– this one’s a 73 year old lady with belly pain. Can you spot the diagnosis? [SO]
• The American College of Critical Care Physicians recently hosted a twitter chat on Point Of Care Ultrasound. Some great questions were asked on its importance, training, and maintaining accreditation. Check out the transcript here. [SO]

The Best of #MedEd FOAM and #FOAMsim

• Excellent discussion from Scott Weingart and Brent Thoma on the online hierarchy of needs. Great video to use as an explanation to FOAM ludites. [AS]

LITFL Weekly Review Team

Reference Sources and Reading List

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