LITFL Review 198

Welcome to the 198th 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

A great new #FOAMcc website is born: ICM Case Summaries! This is what it is all about: “Writing ten expanded case summaries is a requirement of the CCT in Intensive Care Medicine training program for doctors in the UK. These summaries are usually the result of hours of work collecting, synthesising and distilling the most up-to-date evidence on specific clinical questions relevant to intensive care practice in the UK. For most of us though, once they are completed they just sit on our hard drives gathering e-dust. Our aim is to release the untapped potential of these resources and create an online repository of ICM expanded case summaries. As ICM Case Summaries grows it will form a continuously expanding and updating free online educational resource for intensive care medicine professional”. This is an excellent initiative that I hope all UK-based trainees and ICU consultants consider contributing to. The collection of posts is growing rapidly… One to watch! [CN]

The Best of #FOAMed Emergency Medicine

• Excellent review of the evidence behind the use of nitrates and NIPPV in decompensated heart failure in the ED from HEFT EM Cast. Includes the disutility of loop diurectics. [AS]
• More great podcasts coming at a quick-fire rate from CORE EM. This time it’s the management of DKA. [SL]
• The All NYC EM Podcast features Pik Mukherji discussing heuristics and diagnostic errors. [AS]
• Rebecca Maxwell from the Severn FOAMed Network delivers a fantastic podcast on Tricyclic Antidepressant Overdose and discusses the role of intralipid. [SL]
• EM Lit of Note discusses new targets for finding patients amenable to catheter-directed therapy in ischemic CVA for reperfusing at-risk (as opposed to infarcted) tissue. [AS]
• An interesting update on The Alteplase Controversy Goes Prime Time, as the concern over stroke thrombolysis gains more momentum. [SL]
• The Bottom Line reviews an excellent RDCT comparing low dose ketamine to morphine for acute pain management in the ED. [AS]
• Mistakes in medicine are inevitable but rarely gets discussed. This fantastic blog from Sweat the Small Stuff talks about medical errors in a open, honest and informative manner. It is essential reading for all. [SL]
• The latest episode of ERCast delves into the difficulty of deciding “is my patient suicidal”? [MG]

The Best of #FOAMcc Critical Care

• Video demonstration of the core micro-skills necessary for expert central line placement from EM Crit. [AS]
• There has been a surge in case-based Q&As over at INTENSIVE, courtesy of Chris Sia: congenital heart disease in an adult is the focus of Cyanosis, Boots and the 5Ts, key finds on AXR in Belly ache and Rigler’s Sign, and the differential diagnosis of different types of lung opacitites on CXR in Why the alveolar opacities?. [CN]
• Deirdre Murphy (aka ‘ECMO Goddess’!) talks to San Diego’s finest podcasters Joe and Zack about Weaning VA ECMO on the EDECMO.org podcast. The discussion provides great insights into the management and weaning of VA ECMO patients in the ICU. I could have done with hearing this a few years ago! [CN]
• Cardio-pulmonary physiology maven Jon-Emile Kenny has made his Critical Care Medicine board exam review notes available on PulmCCM.org. [CN]
• ScanCrit reviews the recent article in Annals of Surgery looking at the utility of FAST in predicting patients who will not benefit from ED thoracotomy after trauma. [AS]

The Best of #FOAMtox Toxicology

• ECMO makes a double mention this week at the Poison Review: ECMO as a bridge to lung transplantation in paraquat poisoning and ECMO in colchicine poisoning [JAR]
• How does obesity affect the poisoned patient? The Poison Review discusses a recent article on the topic. [AS]

The Best of #FOAMped Pediatrics

• New free iBook – Pediatric Emergency Medicine Guidelines. [AS]

The Best of #MedEd FOAM and #FOAMsim

• Excellent podcast discussing how we can reconcile novel education (i.e. FOAM) with the traditional models at Injectable Orange featuring Vic Brazil and Damian Roland. [AS]
• If you’ve got a presentation to give soon then this is a must listen! Jonathan Downham talks to Ross Fisher on how to make a fantastic presentation. [SL]

LITFL Weekly Review Team

Reference Sources and Reading List

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