The objective of this study was to analyze the prehospital use of a Glidescope video laryngoscope (GSVL) due to anticipated and unexpected difficult airway in a helicopter emergency medical service setting in which emergency physicians (EP) are experienced anesthetists. Retrospective observational study and survey of the experiences of EP were conducted for more than a 3-year period (July 2007-...

Chemical warfare agents are toxic weapons and emergency prehospital medical care providers should be well prepared, trained, and equipped to give response. Personnel need to be aware of the following medical issues regarding prehospital management of a chemical attack, event recognition, incident medical command and control, safety and protection, decontamination, isolation of the incident area...

Chemical warfare agents are toxic weapons and emergency prehospital medical care providers should be well prepared, trained, and equipped to give response. Personnel need to be aware of the following medical issues regarding prehospital management of a chemical attack, event recognition, incident medical command and control, safety and protection, decontamination, isolation of the incident area...

OBJECTIVES To evaluate the test-retest reliability, the concurrent criterion validity, and the construct validity of prehospital, emergency medical service (EMS) case finding for depression and cognitive impairment in older adults. DESIGN Cross-sectional study. SETTING Prehospital EMS system and hospital emergency department. PARTICIPANTS EMS providers and community-dwelling older adult (...

INTRODUCTION International literature describing the profile of trauma patients attended by a statewide emergency medical services (EMS) system is lacking. Most literature is limited to descriptions of trauma responses for a single emergency medical service, or to patients transported to a specific Level-1 trauma hospital. There is no Victorian or Australian literature describing the type of tr...

On September 23, 2010, the American Board of Medical Specialties (ABMS) approved emergency medical services (EMS) as a subspecialty of emergency medicine. As a result, the American Board of Emergency Medicine (ABEM) is planning to award the first certificates in EMS medicine in the fall of 2013. The purpose of subspecialty certification in EMS, as defined by ABEM, is to standardize physician tr...

OBJECTIVES To develop a feasible and safe prehospital decision support system (DSS) for the emergency medical services (EMS), facilitating safe steering of geriatric patients to an optimal level of healthcare. METHODS The development process involves four consecutive steps. The first step was gathering data from patients transported by EMS, with the electronic patient care record, to retrospe...

BACKGROUND The use of emergency services with prehospital stroke assessment and early notification to the treatment hospital (stroke code) is a crucial determinant of delay time for acute stroke treatment. We reviewed and summarized the literature on prehospital stroke code system implementation. METHODS Two databases were explored (last update June 20, 2011) with 3 key words (stroke code, st...

We have read with interest the recent article by Costa Navarro about trauma systems in Spain that analyzed several hospitals specialized in trauma care. We would like to congratulate the authors for their review of more than 100 centers in their study and for the conclusions to which they arrived, with which we agree completely. However, we would like to make some comments based on what we have...

Background Early access to critical care interventions may improve outcomes for severely ill and injured patients. A Cochrane review [1] in 2009 reported that evidence supporting prehospital emergency intubation is lacking, but this does not equate to lack of benefit and prehospital RSI remains controversial. South Africa faces unique challenges due to prolonged prehospital times and limited ac...