Timing is everything: delayed intubation is associated with increased mortality in initially stable trauma patients.

Background: The indications for immediate intubation in trauma are not controversial, but some patients who initially appear stable later deteriorate and require intubation. We postulated that initially stable, moderately injured trauma patients who experienced delayed intubation have higher mortality than those intubated earlier.

Methods: Medical records of trauma patients intubated within 3 h of arrival in the emergency department at our university-based trauma center were reviewed.

Adolescent smokers show decreased brain responses to pleasurable food images compared with nonsmokers.

Introduction: Nicotine acts on the mesocorticolimbic circuits of the brain leading to the release of dopamine. Repeated elevations of dopamine in the brain may cause smokers to become less sensitive to "natural reinforcers." To test the theory that adolescents with low nicotine exposure may already have decreased activation when exposed to a natural reinforcer, we looked at the effect of visual cues representing "pleasurable" food on light adolescent smokers compared with nonsmokers.

Smoking-related cue-induced brain activation in adolescent light smokers.

Purpose: To examine using functional magnetic resonance imaging whether adolescents with low levels of nicotine exposure (light smokers) display neural activation in areas shown to be involved with addiction in response to smoking-related stimuli.

Design/setting/participants: A total of 12 adolescent light smokers (aged 13-17, who smoked 1-5 cigarettes per day) and 12 nonsmokers (ages 13-17, never smoked a cigarette) from the San Francisco Bay Area underwent functional magnetic resonance imaging scanning. During scanning, the adolescents were shown photographic blocks of smoking and control cues.