Pericardial tamponade: A comprehensive emergency medicine and echocardiography review.

Introduction: Pericardial tamponade requires timely diagnosis and management. It carries a high mortality rate.

Objective: This review incorporates available evidence to clarify misconceptions regarding the clinical presentation, while providing an in-depth expert guide on bedside echocardiography.

Defining an Ultrasound-guided Regional Anesthesia Curriculum for Emergency Medicine.

Objectives: Ultrasound-guided regional anesthesia (UGRA) can be a powerful tool in the treatment of painful conditions commonly encountered in emergency medicine (EM) practice. UGRA can benefit patients while avoiding the risks of procedural sedation and opioid-based systemic analgesia. Despite these advantages, many EM trainees do not receive focused education in UGRA and there is no published curriculum specifically for EM physicians.

Thrombotic complications of COVID-19.

Introduction: The novel coronavirus disease of 2019 (COVID-19) is associated with significant morbidity and mortality. The impact of thrombotic complications has been increasingly recognized as an important component of this disease.

Objective: This narrative review summarizes the thrombotic complications associated with COVID-19 with an emphasis on information for Emergency Medicine clinicians.

Early Ambulation After Injury Is Associated With Increased Muscle Size and Strength.

Background: Trauma and management of injuries can result in reduction or loss of mobility, which can lead to skeletal muscle deconditioning and sustained disability. Prior investigators have examined changes in skeletal muscle due to injury and immobility separately. The muscular consequences of combined immobility and trauma have not been systematically investigated.

Point-of-Care Ultrasonography for the Diagnosis of Skin and Soft Tissue Abscesses: A Systematic Review and Meta-analysis.

Study Objective: Skin and soft tissue infections are a common chief complaint in the emergency department. Research has shown that clinical examination alone can be unreliable in distinguishing between cellulitis and abscesses, a distinction that is important because they each require different treatments. Point-of-care ultrasonography has been increasingly studied as a tool to improve the diagnostic accuracy for these skin and soft tissue infections.

Does the Addition of M-Mode to B-Mode Ultrasound Increase the Accuracy of Identification of Lung Sliding in Traumatic Pneumothoraces?

Objectives: It is unknown whether the addition of M-mode to B-mode ultrasound (US) has any effect on the overall accuracy of interpretation of lung sliding in the evaluation of a pneumothorax by emergency physicians. This study aimed to determine what effect, if any, this addition has on US interpretation by emergency physicians of varying training levels.

Methods: One hundred forty emergency physicians were randomized via online software to receive a quiz with B-mode clips alone or B-mode with corresponding M-mode images and asked to identify the presence or absence of lung sliding.

M.mode.ify: A Free Online Tool to Generate Post Hoc M-Mode Images From Any Ultrasound Clip.

We present a software tool designed to generate an M-mode image post hoc from any B-mode ultrasound clip, along any possible axis. M.mode.

The irregular diaphragmatic pleural interface: a novel sonographic sign facilitating the diagnosis of pneumonia.

Pneumonia, a disease that has been reported to be the sixth leading cause of death in the United States, has worsening mortality with delays in diagnosis. As the history and physical examination are excessively inaccurate in the diagnosis of pneumonia, we often rely on chest radiography to rule in or out disease. However, it is found to lack sufficient accuracy when computed tomography is used as the reference standard.

Use of echocardiography to identify appropriate placement of a central venous catheter wire in the vena cava prior to cannulation.

Ultrasound guidance is now the standard of care when placing a central venous catheter (CVC), resulting in decreased complications and increased first-pass success rates. However, even with ultrasound guidance being used for the initial venipuncture, misplacement of a CVC in either an unwanted vein or in an artery still occurs. Here, we discuss a simple technique to assist in the adequate placement of the CVC in the vena cava using bedside echocardiography.