Department Blog

Jon Mark Hirshon, MD, MPH, FACEP, FAAEM, FACPM, is among the authors of the article, “Correlation Between the Revised Trauma Score and Injury Severity Score: Implications for Prehospital Trauma Triage” (abstract available), published in Prehospital Emergency Care. The objectives of their study were to:

• Assess the correlation of the physiologically based Revised Trauma Score (RTS) and MGAP score (mechanism of injury, Glasgow Coma Scale, age, blood pressure) with the anatomically based Injury Severity Score
• Compare the accuracy of the MGAP score and the RTS for the prediction of in-hospital mortality for trauma patients

Mike Winters, MD, and colleagues have published a podcast episode, “TTM for Nonshockable Rhythms?” (paid subscription required), as part of their twice-monthly podcast, Critical Care Perspectives in Emergency Medicine (CCPEM). In this episode, the doctors discuss Lascarrou et al.’s recent article in the New England Journal of Medicine, “Targeted Temperature Management for Cardiac Arrest with Nonshockable Rhythm” (abstract available). A companion PDF of key points and takeaways is available to podcast subscribers.

Kinjal Sethuraman, MD, MPH, has had an article, “Engaging emergency medicine influencers: lessons learned from the sex and gender interest group and the SAEM [Society for Academic Emergency Medicine] jeopardy game,” accepted for publication in AEM Education and Training. Keep an eye out for it!

William Fernandez, MD; Laura Bontempo, MD; and Zachary Dezman, MD, have had an article, “50-year-old Male with Chest Pain” (full text available), published in Clinical Practice and Cases in Emergency Medicine. Published as a clinicopathological case from the University of Maryland, the article discusses the case of a patient who presented to the emergency department with four days of intermittent chest pain and shortness of breath, progressively worsening in severity, and takes the reader through the differential diagnosis and systematic work-up of the deadly causes of chest pain, ultimately leading to the man’s diagnosis.

Sarah Dubbs, MD, has been invited to speak on oncologic emergency topics at the November 2019 Asian Conference on Emergency Medicine (ACEM), which is expected to draw at least 2,000 attendees to New Delhi, India. The themes of this year’s ACEM are affordable care, bridging gaps, and creating impact.

Michael Grasso, MD, PhD, FACP; Zachary Dezman, MD; and David Jerrard, MD, are among the authors of an abstract published in the Annals of Emergency Medicine, “Coding disparity and specificity during emergency department visits after transitioning to the tenth version of the International Classification of Disease [ICD-10]” (full text available), from the American College of Emergency Physicians’ 2019 Research Forum. The authors sought to evaluate whether the increased granularity inherent in ICD-10 has led to greater specificity in diagnosis and coding. They found that the distribution of diagnoses remained unchanged, but there were fewer encounters with multiple codes with ICD-10, and while the post-transition encounters used more unique codes, providers did not consistently exploit these to create more specific codes.

Kyle Fischer, MD, has had an article, “Prevention Professional for Violence Intervention: A Newly Recognized Health Care Provider for Population Health Programs,” accepted for publication in the February 2020 issue of Journal of Health Care for the Poor and Underserved. Keep an eye out for it!

Michael Bond, MD, is among the authors of “How Well Does the Standardized Video Interview Score Correlate with Traditional Interview Performance?” (full text available) published in the Western Journal of Emergency Medicine. The article reports on a study to determine whether a Standardized Video Interview score correlates with a traditional in-person interview score. Results suggest a small positive linear correlation.

Sarah B. Dubbs, MD, has authored an activity eligible for CME credit through Medscape: "Minimizing the Impact of imAEs and Maximizing Efficacy in the Emergency Department." The goal of this activity is to educate clinicians treating patients with cancer, including those in the emergency department, on how to recognize and manage immune-mediated adverse events (imAEs) related to the use of immune checkpoint inhibitors. Access is free with registration.

Daniel L. Lemkin, MD, Benoit Stryckman, MA, and Zachary D.W. Dezman, MD, among other authors, have an in-press article titled “Integrating a safety smart list into the electronic health record decreases intensive care unit length of stay and cost” prepublished online in the Journal of Critical Care.

Dr. Dezman writes, "This paper shows the impact of a preventative-care checklist for critically ill patients. It reminds physicians to administer prophylactic medications and remove lines and catheters as soon as it is safe for patients. The checklist will dynamically update to reflect the patient's status (e.g., it won't ask the physician to remove a central line that was already removed). It was designed to work in any type of critical care unit (adults or children, surgical and medical patients) and is integrated into our EHR.

The more that the clinicians used the checklist, the more likely the patient was to be downgraded sooner from the ICU compared to regular care. There was a decrease in days where the patient was on a breathing machine and a trend towards fewer cases of ventilator-associated pneumonia. There was a corresponding decrease in costs. There was no change in mortality associated with checklist use.

We are currently working towards getting more clinician engagement and measuring the impact of the checklist as it is used more and more."