Utilization and Safety of a Pulmonary Embolism Treatment Protocol in an Emergency Department Observation Unit.

Unlabelled: Pulmonary embolism (PE) is a common disease in emergency medicine and treatment approaches vary greatly. Emergency department observation units (EDOUs) have provided the opportunity to complete a PE workup, initiate treatment, and arrange appropriate follow-up for low-risk patients.

Objective: We sought to evaluate the utilization and safety of a treatment protocol for low-risk PE in an EDOU.

Evaluating age in the field triage of injured persons.

Study Objective: We evaluate trauma undertriage by age group, the association between age and serious injury after accounting for other field triage criteria and confounders, and the potential effect of a mandatory age triage criterion for field triage.

Methods: This was a retrospective cohort study of injured children and adults transported by 48 emergency medical services (EMS) agencies to 105 hospitals in 6 regions of the western United States from 2006 through 2008. We used probabilistic linkage to match EMS records to hospital records, including trauma registries, state discharge databases, and emergency department databases.

Characteristics of the first two years of applicants to a new emergency medicine residency program.

Background: To the best of our knowledge, no study has compared the effect of using the Electronic Residency Application Service (ERAS) on applicant pool characteristics for a new emergency medicine (EM) residency program.

Objective: We sought to compare applicants in an EM residency program's first year, in which the ERAS is not typically used, to applicants in year 2 (using ERAS).

Methods: We reviewed the applications to the new University of Utah EM residency program for the entering classes of 2005 (year 1) and 2006 (year 2).

Treatment of low-risk pulmonary embolism patients in a chest pain unit.

Background: Several studies have proposed the Pulmonary Embolism Severity Index (PESI) as a risk stratification tool for discharge of low-risk pulmonary embolism (PE) patients from the emergency department (ED) and treatment as outpatients, but this has not become accepted standard of care in the United States. Chest pain units (CPUs) may serve as ideal locations for the treatment and risk-stratification of low-risk PE patients, thus avoiding lengthy inpatient stays while assuring patients are appropriate for outpatient therapy for PE. We sought to characterize the number of patients at our institution who may be eligible for a short stay in our CPU and then established a protocol for the treatment of low-risk patients in the CPU.