Pediatric procedural sedation and analgesia.

Sedation and analgesia are vital components of pediatric emergency care. When children present to the emergency department injured, it may be difficult to administer care secondary to the child's anxiety, pain, lack of cooperation, and pressure by the parents to alleviate the child's discomfort. There is much in the emergency physician armamentarium to address these circumstances and provide excellent care, safely.

Needle-free jet injection of lidocaine for local anesthesia during lumbar puncture: a randomized controlled trial.

Background: Lumbar puncture (LP) is an essential procedure in the emergency department (ED) for the evaluation of meningitis. Subcutaneous injection of lidocaine before LP for local anesthesia is not a pain-free procedure. The J-Tip device allows an intradermal needle-free jet injection of 1% buffered lidocaine.

Health issues among foreign born uninsured children visiting an inner city pediatric emergency department.

Unlabelled: To study the demographic and socio-economic characteristics of foreign born children visiting an inner city pediatric emergency department (PED) and to assess their access to care, unmet health care needs, barriers to care and follow-up care. A cross-sectional study was conducted in October and November 2006; parents of children visiting an inner city PED underwent face-to-face interview regarding their socio-economic status, access to health care, unmet medical needs and barriers to care. A follow-up telephonic interview was conducted within 1 week of the ED visit to assess compliance with follow-up care.

Nicotine decreases agrin signaling and acetylcholine receptor clustering in C2C12 myotube culture.

The clustering of acetylcholine receptors (AChRs) in skeletal muscle fibers is a critical event in neuromuscular synaptogenesis. AChRs in concert with other molecules form postsynaptic scaffolds in response to agrin released from motor neurons as motor neurons near skeletal muscle fibers in development. Agrin drives an intracellular signaling pathway that precedes AChR clustering and includes the tyrosine phosphorylation of AChRs.

Sex differences in spatial and non-spatial Y-maze performance after chronic stress.

Chronic restraint is known to alter hippocampal CA3 dendritic morphology and spatial memory in male rats. The present study examined whether female rats, which exhibit different anatomical adaptations to chronic stress than those of males, would also show spatial memory impairments. Male and female Sprague-Dawley rats were restrained for 6 h/day for 21 days, a time frame previously demonstrated to cause hippocampal CA3 dendritic atrophy.