LITFL Review 253

Welcome to the 253rd 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

The ICN has an excellent online focused critical care ultrasound (FCUS) courseavailable. The course is accredited for those licensed to practice in Australia. Registration is required, although its freely available for everyone everywhere. Get your POCUS on, folks! [SO]

The Best of #FOAMed Emergency Medicine

• An excellent reminder that the presence of a pacemaker doesn’t preclude us from diagnosing a STEMI. From Stephen Smith. [AS]
• The SGEM features a review of catheter-directed thrombolytics in the treatment of submassive and massive PE, with a drop-in from Jeff Kline. [AS]
• Head injury on warfarin, neurologically normal and a normal CT head scan: admit or discharge? A great blog from Aimee Wright on the topic. [SL]
• Lets face it, we’re not getting any younger–and neither are our patients. FOAMShed looks at the topic of delirium screening in the ED in their journal club. [SL]

The Best of #FOAMcc Critical Care

• Jon-Emile Kenny discusses the challenge of antibiotic pharmacokinetics in the critically ill. Are we using piperacillin-tazobactam correctly? Read the article to find out… [SO]
• Flavia Machado discusses what critical care delivery in Brazil is like in her excellent SMACC Dub talk. [SO]
• The Bottom Line takes on the HYPRESS trial looking at hydrocortisone in severe pre-shock sepsis. [SO]
• Josh Farkas also comments on HYPRESS trial, but discusses it from a statistical perspective, giving us all a lesson on statistical power in the process. [SO]

The Best of #FOAMres Resuscitation

• Simon and the St. Emlyn’s crew turn a critical eye to the REASON trial. Does US predict death? Yes, to a certain degree. Does it predict survival in arrest? No. [AS]

The Best of #FOAMus Ultrasound

• Does point of care ultrasound really make you better? Let Ressa Lewis tell you why and how in another great talk from SMACC Dub. [SO]

The Best of #FOAMped Pediatrics

• Delivering bad news is hard enough without having to deliver it to a child. Iain and Liz discuss our role in the process and how to be open and honest. [AS]
• Not all that wheezes has spasm.  Anyone see the heated twitter debate on the use of beta agonists in kids with bronchiolitis this week?  Edward Snelson did, so he wrote this. [CC]
• In case you missed this last week: Amazing resource for Peds EM–the PEM Guide 3.0 is now free via iTunes. [AS]

The Best of #FOAMim Internal Medicine

• Acute decompensated heart failure from the successful team at Louisville Lectures.

The Best of #MedEd FOAM and #FOAMsim

• Is normalization of deviance standard practice in medicine? This is a great thought piece on how systematic acceptance of substandard care can move us away from the best we can do. [AS]
• This is one for the stats geeks out there:  Interval Likelihood ratios and their applicability to your patient’s bedside, from The Resus Room [CC]
• In case you missed this last week: a brand new and potentially game-changing Web resource for medical students and others, Medskl presents short (2-3 minute) but smart videocasts, wonderfully illustrated and following the FOAMed philosophy. [ML]

LITFL Weekly Review Team

Reference Sources and Reading List

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