TENS relieves acute posttraumatic hip pain during emergency transport.

Background: In Central Europe, ambulances for patients suffering from pain caused by nonlife-threatening trauma, such as hip fractures are staffed by medical personnel (medics) without physicians. Thus, there is an urgent need for nonpharmacological interventions that can be applied during the transport by basic life-support (BLS) medical personnel.

Methods: In all, 101 patients were screened for participation in this randomized placebo-controlled double-blind study, and randomly assigned to two groups (verum and sham transcutaneous electrical nerve stimulation [TENS]).

Capnography in non-tracheally intubated emergency patients as an additional tool in pulse oximetry for prehospital monitoring of respiration.

Unlabelled: Victims of minor trauma transported by paramedic-based rescue systems are usually monitored with pulse oximetry. Under the difficult surroundings of prehospital trauma care, pulse oximeters show considerable periods of malfunction. We tested the hypothesis that capnography is a good, easy to use tool for monitoring in nonintubated trauma victims.