Training in and comfort with diagnosis and management of ophthalmic emergencies among emergency medicine physicians in the United States.

Background/objectives: Patients with ophthalmic emergencies often present to emergency rooms. Emergency medicine (EM) physicians should feel comfortable encountering these conditions. We assessed EM physicians' comfort working up, diagnosing, and managing ophthalmic emergencies.

The Inter-rater Reliability of Echocardiographic Diastolic Function Evaluation Among Emergency Physician Sonographers.

Study Objectives: In a patient with dyspnea and suspected CHF, the evaluation of diastolic function involves: tissue Doppler of the mitral annulus and 2) pulsed wave Doppler of the mitral inflow. We aimed to 1) determine the inter-rater reliability for overall diastolic function and 2) evaluate the reliability of the individual Doppler measurements.

Methods: A convenience sample of adult emergency department patients was prospectively enrolled by 8 EPs who had participated in a 1-hour didactic session.

Does tailoring instructional style to a medical student's self-perceived learning style improve performance when teaching intravenous catheter placement? A randomized controlled study.

Background: Students may have different learning styles. It is unclear, however, whether tailoring instructional methods for a student's preferred learning style improves educational outcomes when teaching procedures. The authors sought to examine whether teaching to a student's self-perceived learning style improved the acquisition of intravenous (IV) catheter placement skills.

Ultrasound in the evaluation of penetrating thoraco-abdominal trauma: a review of the literature.

The use of ultrasound in the evaluation of blunt thoraco-abdominal trauma is well described. Evidence for the use of ultrasound in the evaluation of penetrating cardio-thoracic and abdominal trauma, however, is more limited and varied. Current literature demonstrates that ultrasound is an excellent screening tool for penetrating thoracic and cardiac injuries with a high sensitivity for detecting injury requiring acute intervention.

GM-CSF upregulated in rheumatoid arthritis reverses cognitive impairment and amyloidosis in Alzheimer mice.

Rheumatoid arthritis (RA) is a negative risk factor for the development of Alzheimer's disease (AD). While it has been commonly assumed that RA patients' usage of non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs) helped prevent onset and progression of AD, NSAID clinical trials have proven unsuccessful in AD patients. To determine whether intrinsic factors within RA pathogenesis itself may underlie RA's protective effect, we investigated the activity of colony-stimulating factors, upregulated in RA, on the pathology and behavior of transgenic AD mice.