Pacemaker Malfunction-Review of Permanent Pacemakers and Malfunctions Encountered in the Emergency Department.

Pacemaker malfunction refers to a failure of the pacemaker to perform the desired cardiac pacemaking function. These malfunctions can occur anywhere within the system from the pulse generator and leads to the electrode-myocardium interface. These failures of sensing, capture, and inadequate pacing can have severe hemodynamic consequences, so rapid identification of specific dysfunction is critical to intervention and stabilization.

Hereditary Syndromes of Sudden Cardiac Death.

Sudden cardiac death (SCD) describes the unexpected natural death from a cardiac cause within a short time period, generally 1 hour or lesser from the onset of symptoms, often due to a cardiac dysrhythmia. Overall, the most common cause of SCD is coronary artery disease but for patients aged younger than 35 years, the most common cause of SCD is a dysrhythmia in the setting of a structurally normal heart. This article will review the background, diagnosis, and management of the common hereditary channelopathies and cardiomyopathies associated with an increased risk of SCD in patients without ischemic heart disease.

Development, Implementation, and Evaluation of an Open Access, Level-Specific, Core Content Curriculum for Emergency Medicine Residents.

Background: Leaders in graduate medical education must provide robust clinical and didactic experiences to prepare residents for independent practice. Programs traditionally create didactic experiences individually, requiring tremendous resources with variable content exposure and quality.

Objective: We sought to create and implement a free, open access, learner-centric, level-specific, emergency medicine (EM) residency curriculum.

Community-associated methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus survival on artificial turf substrates.

Objective: Artificial turf has been suggested as a risk factor for community-associated methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (CA-MRSA). This is an experimental study looking at survival of CA-MRSA on artificial turf.

Methods: MRSA strain USA-300-0114 was grown as either planktonic cells or biofilms in liquid cultures of beef heart infusion broth overnight at 37 °C.