The Emerging Drugs Network of Australia - Victoria Clinical Registry: A state-wide illicit substance surveillance and alert network.

Objectives: With an increasingly dynamic global illicit drug market, including the emergence of novel psychoactive substances, many jurisdictions have moved to establish toxicosurveillance systems to enable timely detection of harmful substances in the community. This paper describes the methodology for the Emerging Drugs Network of Australia - Victoria (EDNAV) project, a clinical registry focused on the collection of high-quality clinical and analytical data from ED presentations involving illicit drug intoxications. Drug intelligence collected from the project is utilised by local health authorities with the aim to identify patterns of drug use and emerging drugs of concern.

Finger thoracostomy in patients with chest trauma performed by paramedics on a helicopter emergency medical service.

Objective: To determine the frequency of finger thoracostomy performed by intensive care flight paramedics after the introduction of a training programme in this procedure and complications of the procedure that were diagnosed after hospital arrival.

Methods: This was a retrospective cohort study of adult and paediatric trauma patients undergoing finger thoracostomy performed by paramedics on a helicopter emergency medical service between June 2015 and May 2018. Hospital data were obtained through a manual search of the medical records at each of the three receiving major trauma services.