Prehospital ultrasound thoracic examination to improve decision making, triage, and care in blunt trauma.

Prehospital acute blunt thoracic trauma care remains difficult. Among then, diagnosis of atelectasis with ultrasound remains rare and unusual. We report the case of a worker who had a sharp chest pain currently after using a jackhammer. First clinical examination suspected a left tension pneumothorax but ruled out by sliding sign in left hemithorax ultrasound (US) examination. The right upper thoracic scan showed a well-defined lung point, a "hepatization" appearance with static air bronchograms, a diaphragm elevation and a dextrocardia in B mode, and a pseudobarcode with no lung pulse in Time Motion (TM) mode. A "rip's organ absent sign" excluded the hypothesis of an acute diaphragmatic rupture. An atelectasis was at once suspected and confirmed at hospital by tomodensitometry. Diaphragmatic injury can be suspected when "rip's absent organ sign," diaphragm poor movement or elevation, liver sliding sign, subphrenic effusion, or spleen or liver intrathoracic presence. Unusually, these signs can put diagnosis in a wrong track as described in our case report. Lung pulse, absent sliding sign, or hemidiaphragm standstill is highly suspect of atelectasis but cannot be established formally. However, in patients with alveolar consolidation displaying air bronchograms, the dynamic air bronchograms indicated lung contusion, distinguishing it from atelectasis. Static air bronchograms were seen in most atelectases and one-third of cases of contusion or pneumonia. Fast scan can be useful to evoke atelectasis in blunt trauma. Differential diagnoses such as diaphragmatic rupture or consolidation could be discarded. Ultrasound examination could justify a precise semiological description.

Vasopressin and epinephrine vs. epinephrine alone in cardiopulmonary resuscitation.

BACKGROUND: During the administration of advanced cardiac life support for resuscitation from cardiac arrest, a combination of vasopressin and epinephrine may be more effective than epinephrine or vasopressin alone, but evidence is insufficient to make clinical recommendations. METHODS: In a multicenter study, we randomly assigned adults with out-of-hospital cardiac arrest to receive successive injections of either 1 mg of epinephrine and 40 IU of vasopressin or 1 mg of epinephrine and saline placebo, followed by administration of the same combination of study drugs if spontaneous circulation was not restored and subsequently by additional epinephrine if needed. The primary end point was survival to hospital admission; the secondary end points were return of spontaneous circulation, survival to hospital discharge, good neurologic recovery, and 1-year survival. RESULTS: A total of 1442 patients were assigned to receive a combination of epinephrine and vasopressin, and 1452 to receive epinephrine alone. The treatment groups had similar baseline characteristics except that there were more men in the group receiving combination therapy than in the group receiving epinephrine alone (P=0.03). There were no significant differences between the combination-therapy and the epinephrine-only groups in survival to hospital admission (20.7% vs. 21.3%; relative risk of death, 1.01; 95% confidence interval [CI], 0.97 to 1.05), return of spontaneous circulation (28.6% vs. 29.5%; relative risk, 1.01; 95% CI, 0.97 to 1.06), survival to hospital discharge (1.7% vs. 2.3%; relative risk, 1.01; 95% CI, 1.00 to 1.02), 1-year survival (1.3% vs. 2.1%; relative risk, 1.01; 95% CI, 1.00 to 1.02), or good neurologic recovery at hospital discharge (37.5% vs. 51.5%; relative risk, 1.29; 95% CI, 0.81 to 2.06). CONCLUSIONS: As compared with epinephrine alone, the combination of vasopressin and epinephrine during advanced cardiac life support for out-of-hospital cardiac arrest does not improve outcome. (ClinicalTrials.gov number, NCT00127907.)