Trailhead quotas are often used in national parks to limit the number of visitors and provide opportunities for solitude, but...
MedicalResearch.com Interview with:Daniel J. Lane PhD
Institute of Health Policy, Management and Evaluation
Dalla Lana School of Public Health, University of Toronto
Rescu, Li Ka Shing Knowledge Institute, St Michael’s Hospital
Toronto, Ontario, Canada
MedicalResearch.com: What is the background for this study? What are the main findings?
Response: Early resuscitation and early antibiotics have become the mainstay treatment for patients with sepsis. The time to initiation of these treatments is thought to be an important factor in patients surviving their disease; however, the independent benefits or harms of intravenous fluid resuscitation, in particular a more aggressive versus more conservative approach to this therapy, remains difficult to evaluate given the concurrent use of these therapies in hospital.
To gain a better understanding of this treatment independent of antibiotic use, we assessed intravenous fluid resuscitation by paramedics on the in-hospital mortality of patients with sepsis. By accounting for the interaction between initial systolic blood pressure and the treatment, we found that earlier resuscitation by paramedics was associated with decreased mortality in patients with low initial blood pressures but not associated with mortality for patients with normal or higher initial blood pressures.
Dr. Raymond E. Bertino, MD
airRx lead developer and
Clinical Professor of Radiology and Surgery at UICOMP
MedicalResearch.com: What is the background for the airRX app and study?
Response: With increasing air travel, in-flight medical emergencies have increased and physicians on commercial airline flights are routinely asked to volunteer assistance. A study presented this week at the annual meeting of The Society for Academic Emergency Medicine (SAEM) examined physician performance during practice simulations of in-flight medical emergencies with use of a smartphone app, airRx.
In the unique study, cases based on commonly occurring in-flight medical emergencies were portrayed in a mockup of the airline cabin setting. Actors portrayed patients, family members, seat neighbors and flight attendants. Resident physicians in non-emergency specialties were asked to assist as if they were volunteering in actual medical emergencies.
The study utilized airRx, the mobile app developed to help physicians and other medical personnel volunteering during in-flight medical events. The airRx app enables healthcare professionals to access 23 scenarios of the most common medical emergencies, with concise treatment algorithms and reference information to help evaluate and treat the patient. 
Dr. Jarman[/caption]
Dr. Molly Jarman PhD
Postdoctoral Research Fellow at
Brigham and Womens Hospital
MedicalResearch.com: What is the background for this study?
Response: Injuries are a leading cause of death and disability in the US, and there are well documented disparities in injury incidence and outcomes. Certain populations (i.e. rural, low income, people of color) experience more injury than others, and are more likely to die following and injury.
Past studies focused on individual health and socioeconomic characteristics as the primary driving force behind these disparities, along with variation in the time required to transport an injured patient to the hospital. We wondered if geographic features of an injury incident location contributed to variation in injury mortality that was not explained by differences in individual patient characteristics.
In other words, we know that who you are contributes to injury mortality, and we wanted to know if it also matters where you are when an injury occurs.
Dr. Capp[/caption]
Roberta Capp MD
Assistant Professor
Director for Care Transitions in the Department of Emergency Medicine
University of Colorado School of Medicine
Medical Director of Colorado Access Medicaid
Aurora Colorado
MedicalResearch.com: What is the background for this study? What are the main findings?
Response: Medicaid clients are at highest risk for utilizing the hospital system due to barriers in accessing outpatient services and social determinants.
We have found that providing care management services improves primary care utilization, which leads to better chronic disease management and reductions in emergency department use and hospital admissions.
Dr. Ryan McTaggart[/caption]
Ryan A. McTaggart M.D.
Assistant Professor of Diagnostic Imaging, Neurology, and Neurosurgery
@mobilestroke4U
Warren Alpert School of Medicine
Brown University
Rhode Island Hospital
MedicalResearch.com: What is the background for this study?
Response: Stroke is the #1 cause of disability and 5th leading cause of death. Mechanical thrombectomy (direct mechanical removal of the obstructing blood clot) is a dramatically effective treatment for the most devastating of all acute ischemic strokes – emergency large vessel occlusion (ELVO).
Access to this treatment can be optimized with the use of
1) mobile stroke unit technology,
2) changing our Emergency medical services triage algorithms so that stroke matches that of trauma (using field severity to transport the right patient, to the right hospital, the first time, whenever possible), and
3) improving in-hospital processes at Primary Stroke Centers (PSCs) so that patients with suspected ELVO who present to a PSC (a hospital that does not offer mechanical thrombectomy) do not get left behind and untreated.
This study reflects an effort to address and improve the third item.
Dr. Devon A. Klein[/caption]
Devon A. Klein, MD, MPH
Asst. Professor of Radiology and Orthopaedics
Hofstra Northwell School of Medicine
Associate Chairman, Radiology
Lenox Hill Hospital
New York, NY 10075
MedicalResearch.com: What is the background for this study? What are the main findings?
Response: As our Emergency Department continued to grow our Radiology Department was challenged to accommodate the resultant increased volume with fixed resources (i.e. CT Scanners) and maintain CT scan throughput. Uncoordinated insular efforts within the Department of Radiology failed to resolve the problem. A collaborative approach utilizing Six Sigma lean and involving stakeholders from the Departments of Radiology, Emergency, Medicine, and Patient Transportation was able to better illustrate the “bottlenecks” and devise solutions.
MedicalResearch.com Interview with:
Heidi Mochari-Greenberger Ph.D., M.P.H
Associate research scientist
Columbia University Medical Center
New York, N.Y
MedicalResearch: What is the background for this study?
Dr. Mochari-Greenberger: Differences in activation of emergency medical services (EMS) may contribute to race/ethnic and sex disparities in stroke outcomes. The purpose of this study was to determine whether EMS use varied by race/ethnicity or sex among a contemporary, diverse national sample of hospitalized acute stroke patients.
MedicalResearch: What are the main findings?
Dr. Mochari-Greenberger: Use of EMS transport among hospitalized stroke patients was less than 60% and varied by race/ethnicity and sex; EMS use was highest among white females and lowest among Hispanic males. Our analyses showed that Hispanic and Asian men and women were significantly less likely than their white counterparts to use EMS; black females were less likely than white females to use EMS, but black men had a similar rate to white men. These observed associations between race/ethnicity and sex with EMS use persisted after adjustment for stroke symptoms and other factors known to be associated with EMS use, indicating they were not driven solely by stroke symptom differences.