Cervical spine fractures in elderly patients with hip fracture after low-level fall: an opportunity to refine prehospital spinal immobilization guidelines?

Background: Conventional prehospital spine-assessment approaches based on low index of suspicion and mechanism of injury (MOI) result in the liberal application of spinal immobilization in trauma patients. A painful distracting injury (DI), such as a suspected hip fracture, historically has been a sufficient condition for immobilization, even in an elderly patient who suffers a simple fall from standing and exhibits no other risk factors for spinal injury. Because the elderly are at increased risk of hip fracture from low-level falls, and are also particularly susceptible to the discomfort and morbidity associated with immobilization, the prevalence of cervical spine (c-spine) fracture in this patient population was examined.

Reproducibility of impedance cardiography parameters in outpatients with clinically stable coronary artery disease.

Background: Impedance cardiography (ICG) is a noninvasive method of determining hemodynamic parameters. It is clinically important to determine whether any change in ICG parameters occur due to changes in disease status or therapeutic interventions, or due to normal hemodynamic and technology variability. The objective of this study was to establish the intra- and inter-day reproducibility of ICG in a stable population with coronary artery disease (CAD).