To the Editor: Prehospital use of CPAP reduces the mortality and intubation rate for patients with acute respiratory failure especially due to acute cardiogenic pulmonary edema.1 Although it is considered in guidelines, the need for additional trained health workers, special equipment, and clinical evidence for effectiveness and cost-effectiveness limits widespread use.1,2 The Boussignac CPAP f...

BACKGROUND Less is known about the prevalence of pain in prehospital emergency medicine than about pain in the emergency department. Objectives. To estimate the prehospital prevalence of pain and to identify the factors associated with oligoanalgesia. METHODS The mobile intensive care units of the emergency services of a Paris suburb conducted this prospective study. All consecutive patients ...

Tippett and co-authors are to be congratulated for an insightful and well written paper that addresses an important issue in prehospital care. Governments and emergency operations personnel often plan for future pandemics with a focus on distribution of " stuff " such as gloves, masks, beds, and ventilators. Inadequate attention is directed to healthcare provider staffing, including staffing of...

Objectives: To examine the emerging role of the emergency care practitioner (ECP) with comparisons to paramedic practice. Key activities were identified of newly appointed ECPs using qualitative methodology and a qualitative and quantitative comparison of patient treatment was made. Method: A constructivist methodology taking account of stakeholder input and drawing upon the constant comparison...

OBJECTIVE We aimed to evaluate the knowledge and attitudes of emergency medical service (EMS) personnel pertaining to sepsis. We also compared EMS personnel's knowledge of sepsis and their intention to engage in prehospital sepsis management. METHODS The survey was conducted during education conferences for EMS personnel in December 2013 and January 2015 in Seoul, Korea. The questionnaire com...

BACKGROUND Injuries are a major cause of mortality and disability worldwide and are estimated to become the third leading cause of death by 2020. Most traffic deaths occur during the prehospital phase; consequently, prehospital trauma care has received considerable attention during the past decade. However, there is no study on the prehospital immobilization of spine and limbs in patients with ...

Introduction: It is widely accepted that musculoskeletal injuries, especially in the lumbar region, are among the most common complaints of people working in emergency medical services (EMS). This study aimed to determine the prevalence of low back pain (LBP) and its associated factors in the field staff of prehospital EMS in northern Iran. Methods: This cross-sectional descriptive correlation...

BACKGROUND It has been suggested that prehospital care teams that can provide advanced prehospital interventions may decrease the transit time through the ED to CT scan and subsequent surgery. This study is an exploratory analysis of data from the Head Injury Retrieval Trial (HIRT) examining the relationship between prehospital team type and time intervals during the prehospital and ED phases o...

BACKGROUND During cold weather months in much of the country, the temperatures in which prehospital care is delivered creates the potential for inadvertently cool intravenous fluids to be administered to patients during their transport and care by emergency medical services (EMS). There is some potential for patient harm from unintentional infusion of cool intravenous fluids. Prehospital provid...

Ambulance staff with advanced training in cardiopulmonary resuscitation and equipped with monitor/defibrillators were used as the initial responders to collapse calls within a medically based prehospital coronary care system. During 21 months, in a population of approximately 120,000, ambulance staff successfully resuscitated six patients from ventricular fibrillation; there were four long term...