Nontraumatic acute abdominal pain: unenhanced helical CT compared with three-view acute abdominal series.

Purpose: To prospectively evaluate and compare the diagnostic accuracy of unenhanced helical computed tomography (CT) for patients with nontraumatic acute abdominal pain with that of traditional abdominal radiography.

Materials And Methods: Institutional review board approval and informed consent were obtained; this study was completed before implementation of the HIPAA. Ninety-one patients (44 men; 47 women; age range, 18-84 years; mean age, 48.

Derivation of a clinical guideline for the assessment of nonspecific abdominal pain: the Guideline for Abdominal Pain in the ED Setting (GAPEDS) Phase 1 Study.

Objective: The purpose of this study was to identify a clinical guideline for the evaluation of nonspecific abdominal pain (NSAP) using history, physical examination, laboratory analysis, acute abdominal series (AAS) radiographs, and nonenhanced helical computed tomography (NHCT) clinical predictor variables (CPVs).

Setting: The setting of this study was at an urban emergency department (ED) with 70,000 yearly visits.

Methods: This is an institutional review board-approved, prospective, observational study.

An unexpected difficult laryngoscopy.

A case of unexpected difficult laryngoscopy in a patient with gross hydrocephalus and generalized hypertonus is described. The 30-month-old girl had no antecedent history of such difficulty, having had two recent uneventful anaesthetics. We suggest that the reason for our inability to open the patient's mouth was a result of contracture of the temporalis muscle.