[Screening for carbon monoxide (CO) poisoning by general practitioners in home visits].

Objective: To evaluate the interest of carbon monoxide (CO) detector used by general practionners visiting patients at home.

Methods: CO detector (cost: 200 euros) was attributed to 300 general practionners visiting at least 20 patients at home per week. Alarm was triggered when ambient CO concentration exceeded 80ppm.

Prospective evaluation of peripheral venous access difficulty in emergency care.

Objective: Although frequently used and crucial in emergency care, peripheral intravenous access has been poorly documented. We examined whether criteria related to patient characteristics, underlying disease, devices, or environment were associated with difficult peripheral intravenous access.

Design And Setting: Prehospital prospective observational study.

[Determination of early markers of a sanitary event. The example of the heat wave of August 2003 at the Samu 93-centre 15 in France].

Objective: The aim of this study was to determine, a posteriori, the parameters detecting an event in a French medical emergency dispatching centre (SAMU).

Methods: Six parameters were retained: total number of medical requests received by the Samu 93-centre 15: the number of decisions to send a mobile intensive care unit (MICU), number of decisions to send a non-medical unit, number of decisions to send a general practitioner and number of deaths observed by the physicians of the MICU. For each parameter, a daily referential was established over the five previous years (1998 to 2002) and compared with the results of August 2003

Results: The number of decisions to send a non-medical unit and the number of decisions to send a general practitioner were unchanged.