ABSTRACT
In making clinical decisions concerning the urogenital system, the emergency department physician has many different diagnostic tools at his or her disposal. Choosing the appropriate diagnostic study can often be difficult. For well over a thousand years, the initial step in assessing almost any urologic condition has been to examine the urine. Thankfully, this has progressed from a gustatory approach to the modern urinalysis. There is certainly a great deal of information that may be gleaned from the urinalysis, but the physician must also be mindful of its limitations. Overuse of the urinalysis can result in unwanted and unhelpful information. Although IVP is still the study of choice in assessing the functional status of the kidney, the introduction of CT and ultrasound technology to clinical medicine has revolutionized the emergency department assessment of the urogenital tract. CT and ultrasound can help differentiate between the urologic emergencies and the various surgical conditions that can mimic them.
Subject(s)
Diagnostic Imaging/methods , Female Urogenital Diseases/diagnosis , Male Urogenital Diseases , Ultrasonography, Prenatal , Embryo, Mammalian/radiation effects , Female , Humans , Image Enhancement/methods , Male , Pregnancy , Pregnancy Complications/diagnosis , Prenatal Exposure Delayed Effects , Radiation Dosage , Radiography, Abdominal/adverse effects , Sensitivity and Specificity , Tomography, X-Ray Computed/methods , Ultrasonography, Doppler/methods , Urography/methodsABSTRACT
STUDY OBJECTIVE: To use the clinical activities of an ambulance service as a tool to assess the residual and unmet medical needs of a city in the aftermath of a major earthquake and to apply that assessment to the development of a training curriculum for the prehospital personnel. METHODS: The researchers conducted structured interviews with health care workers at all levels of the emergency health care delivery system in Gyumrii, Armenia, and carried out a retrospective frequency analysis of 29,010 ambulance runs for an 11-month period from February through December 1992. Runs first were assigned into the broad categories of: 1) Adult Medical; 2) Pediatric Medical; or 3) Trauma, and then, according to diagnosis. The runs then were classified further as: 1) Primary Care; 2) Basic Life Support (BLS); or 3) Advanced Life Support (ALS). RESULTS: Adult Medical calls represented 24,684 (85%), Pediatric Medical calls 459 (1.6%), and Trauma calls 3,867 (13%). Only 12% of all ambulance calls resulted in transport to a medical facility, although this percentage was higher in children. Thirty percent of Adult Medical patients were diagnosed by the emergency medical providers as having exclusively a psychiatric problem. CONCLUSION: In the late aftermath of a devastating earthquake, the ambulance service in Gyumrii, Armenia has been delivering a substantial proportion of non-emergency, primary care services. They have adopted this unconventional role to compensate for the deficit in health care facilities and personnel created by the disaster. The training program that the investigators developed reflected the actual work activities of the prehospital personnel demonstrated in their assessment.
Subject(s)
Disasters , Emergency Medical Services/organization & administration , Wounds and Injuries/therapy , Adult , Armenia , Child , Child, Preschool , Data Collection , Emergency Medical Services/methods , Female , Gastroenteritis/diagnosis , Gastroenteritis/epidemiology , Humans , Hypertension/diagnosis , Hypertension/epidemiology , Incidence , Male , Needs Assessment , Program Evaluation , Psychotic Disorders/diagnosis , Psychotic Disorders/epidemiology , Relief Work/organization & administration , Respiratory Tract Diseases/diagnosis , Respiratory Tract Diseases/epidemiology , Transportation of Patients , Wounds and Injuries/classification , Wounds and Injuries/epidemiologyABSTRACT
A study was undertaken to determine the relationship between temperature and delivery rate of warmed intravenous fluid using standard intravenous infusion equipment and tubing. One-liter bags of 0.9% NaCl were warmed to 60 degrees C and run through standard microdrip tubing for 1 hour at rates of 1,000, 800, 600, and 400 mL/h. Thermistor probes were placed into the bag and into the tubing at 0, 100, 180, 230, and 280 cm from the intravenous bag. Separate fluid bags were also warmed to 39.3 degrees and 75 degrees C, and the fluid was run through the same apparatus at 1,000 mL/h and 200 mL/h, respectively. Temperatures were recorded at each site at the start of the infusion and every 10 minutes thereafter for 1 hour, Subsequently, 60-mL syringes of fluid warmed to 39.5 degrees C were eluted through 50 cm tubing over 10 minutes at 300 mL/h and 360 mL/h. Mean delivery temperature over each 10-minute infusion was determined. Fluid preheated to 39.3 degrees C approached room temperature at delivery even at a flow rate of 1,000 mL/h and tubing lengths as short as 100 cm. Fluid preheated to 60 degrees C was delivered at near 37 degrees C using tubing lengths as long as 280 cm when eluted at 1,000 mL/h. Fluid preheated to 39 degrees C in 60-mL syringes and eluted through 50 cm of tubing over a period of 10 minutes at 300 mL/h or 360 mL/h was delivered near a mean temperature of 37 degrees C. These results show that warmed fluid can be delivered through standard intravenous tubing at or near 37 degrees C if the fluid is preheated to 60 degrees C and eluted through long tubing (280 cm) at high flow rates (1,000 mL/h). Alternatively, fluid warmed to 37 degrees C to 42 degrees C can be delivered at or near 37 degrees C via intermittent bolus through short tubing (50 cm) either by hand or syringe pump. The latter approach would be particularly beneficial in the pediatric population, in whom it is not advisable to administer fluid at flow rates as high as 1,000 mL/h.
