Score predicting imminent delivery in pregnant women calling the emergency medical service.

Objective: To develop a telephone score predicting imminent delivery.

Methods: Prospective multicenter (n=38) study including pregnancies of 33 weeks or more amenorrhea (n=3.499).

Withholding and withdrawing life-support therapy in an Emergency Department: prospective survey.

Objectives: Few studies have focused on decisions to withdraw or withhold life-support therapies in the emergency department. Our objectives were to identify clinical situations where life-support was withheld or withdrawn, the criteria used by physicians to justify their decisions, the modalities necessary to implement these decisions, patient disposition, and outcome.

Design And Setting: Prospective unicenter survey in an Emergency Department of a tertiary care teaching hospital.

[Development of a tool for the identification of socially vulnerable hospital patients].

Objective: To develop and assess the metrological properties of a simple to use tool to identify socially vulnerable outpatients.

Methods: A multidisciplinary group of professionals selected five characteristics identifying social vulnerability, integrated in a self-reported questionnaire, from which 5 criteria identify the socially vulnerable outpatients consulting the hospital. The metrological performance of the tool was assessed on a sample of randomly selected outpatients admitted to the emergency department and the results referred to the independent assessment of two social workers.

[Meningitis with direct negative bacteriological examination. Prospective assessment of a decision making tree].

Objective: Elaboration of a decision-making tree for differential diagnosis of bacterial and viral meningitis, when initial Gram's staining is negative. Method One-Year prospective study in an adult emergency department. Comparison with the immediately-preceding period.

Efficacy of alteplase thrombolysis for ED treatment of pulmonary embolism with shock.

Our objective was to assess efficacy and tolerance of thrombolysis using 0.6 mg/kg of Alteplase in patients with massive pulmonary embolism defined as the association of a pulmonary embolism with shock. We retrospectively included 21 patients presenting with a massive pulmonary embolism confirmed by either scintigraphy or spiral computed tomography.