Survivorship With Incrementally Faster Times to Primary Percutaneous Coronary Intervention (SWIFT-PPCI): A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis.

In the United States, there are approximately 750,000 ST-elevation myocardial infarction cases each year. Streamlined care and rapid delivery for primary percutaneous coronary intervention (PPCI) is associated with improved survival. This systematic review and meta-analysis aimed to generate a practical estimate of mortality savings for every notional 30-minute decrease in the time to achieving PPCI. Included studies were those that provided a specific absolute risk reduction for a specific reduction in pre-PPCI time. The eligible studies evaluated the survival benefit from pre-PPCI time savings measured in any interval ending with PPCI and commencing with objectively recorded timing, such as initial emergency call, first medical contact, or hospital arrival. Study planning called for the reporting of data as individual study results, with a pooled effect estimate of relative risk calculated with random-effects meta-analysis. A total of 1,088 records were eligible for review; 52 were reviewed in full text, with 4 studies (total patient n = 235,814, overall mortality 4.7% to 7.8%) included in the final analysis. All 4 studies reported significant time-related survival benefit over the study focus window of 60 to 180 minutes pre-PPCI. The number of lives saved per 100 cases for each 30-minute pre-PPCI time savings ranged from 0.8 to 1.9. The overall effect estimate generated was 0.753 (95% confidence interval 0.712 to 0.796), with acceptable heterogeneity (I2 = 36%). In conclusion, a pooled effect calculation estimated a 24.7% relative risk reduction for each 30 minutes of time savings. For cases that underwent PPCI within 60 to 180 minutes of initial presentation with known baseline mortality risk, the time savings in 30-minute epochs can be leveraged to estimate a specific number of lives saved; this may be useful for those involved in the organization of medical care who make systemwide plans and individual patient triage decisions.

Survival Benefit of Helicopter Scene Response for Patients with an Injury Severity Score of at Least Nine: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis.

BACKGROUND AND AIM: Helicopter EMS (HEMS) is a well-established mode of rapid transportation for patients with need for time-sensitive interventions, especially in patients with significant traumatic injuries. Traditionally in the setting of trauma, HEMS is often considered appropriate when used for patients with "severe" injury as defined by Injury Severity Score (ISS) >15. This may be overly conservative, and patients with a lower ISS may benefit from HEMS-associated speed or care quality. Our objective was to perform a meta-analysis of trauma HEMS transports to evaluate for possible mortality benefit in injured cases defined by an ISS score >8, lower than the customary ISS cutoff of >15. METHODS: A broad search of the literature was performed including PubMed, EMBASE, SCOPUS, Cochrane Central Register of Controlled Trials, and Google Scholar from the years 1970 to 2022. The gray literature and reference lists of included publications were also examined. We included studies with the outcome of mortality in HEMS vs control in trauma transports from scene of injury for patients (adult or pediatric) with ISS > 8. RESULTS: Nine eligible studies were used in the final analysis: six in the primary analysis and three in sensitivity analysis due to patient overlap. All studies reported statistically significant survival benefit in HEMS compared to control group. The minimum survival odds ratio (OR) benefit observed was OR 1.15 (95% CI 1.06-1.25) and maximum was OR 2.04 (95% CI 1.18-3.57). Risk of bias tool (ROBINS-I) application yielded moderate to low risk of bias, mainly due to the observational nature of the studies included. CONCLUSIONS: There was a statistically significant survival benefit in patients with ISS > 8 when HEMS was used over traditional ground ambulance transportation, although novel and more inclusive trauma triage criteria may be more appropriate in the future to guide HEMS utilization decision-making. Restricting HEMS to trauma patients with ISS >15 likely misses survival benefit that could be afforded to the subset of trauma patients with serious injury.

Calendar month variation in the diagnosis and severity of pulmonary embolism.

BACKGROUND: Pulmonary embolism (PE) is the third-leading cause of cardiovascular death in the United States, and several studies suggest PE shows seasonal variation. Variation in monthly PE diagnosis may be due to pathophysiologic factors or confounding/bias. However, severe PE may be less prone to diagnostic bias. To address this gap, we analyzed two registries from 1/2013-12/2018 with the aim of describing temporal trends in PE diagnosis and severity. METHODS: We performed a retrospective analysis of two existing databases containing: (1) consecutive patients diagnosed with PE in the emergency departments (EDs) of two large, urban teaching hospitals, and (2) severe PEs requiring PE Response Team (PERT) activation at one of the above hospitals. The primary outcome was to assess variation in PE diagnosis and severity by calendar month. Separate analysis of these two databases sought to control for workup bias by trainee experience across the academic year. One-way ANOVA and Poisson regression were performed to assess for cyclical variation across calendar months, using Stata v16.1. RESULTS: The PE diagnosis database contained 1324 patients over 36 months. One-way ANOVA did not reveal a statistically significant (p = 0.713) association between calendar month and PE number. The PERT activation database contained 1082 patients over 72 months. One-way ANOVA revealed a statistically significant (p = 0.024) association between calendar month and activations, repeated year-on-year. CONCLUSION: Our results indicate correlation between calendar month and PERT activation; however, this pattern was not observed for PE diagnoses. This finding warrants further investigation into the causes of calendar month variation of PERT activations.

Ramadan-Associated Circadian Census Variation In A Busy Middle Eastern Emergency Department.

BACKGROUND: An important goal for the Emergency Department operations is planning for changes in patient volume and assuring staffing accordingly. We hypothesized that understanding the Emergency Department census changes during the month-long Ramadan holiday each year could facilitate operations planning for Emergency Department's serving a largely Muslim population. METHODS: This was an observational study conducted at an academic centre, over 83 weeks of analysis that included two Ramadan months (those occurring during 2016 and 2017). The data was from an electronic medical record that records presentation time as well as age, sex, nationality, and acuity. Chi-square and mediandifferences testing (p<.05 defining significance) were used to compare overall patient characteristics between cases seen during Ramadan vs. non-Ramadan. RESULTS: For the 83 study weeks, the Emergency Department volume was 689,140 (annualized volume 431,750). Graphic depiction of weekly census showed Ramadan-associated census impact varied markedly over the course of a day's 24 hours. Statistically significant hourly census increase (of up to 83%) or decrease (of as much as 50%) were identified for 21 of 24 hours of the day. Ramadan was not associated with change in patient age or proportion of high-acuity cases. However, it was associated with increase in proportion of males, paediatrics, and Qatari national's patient visits. CONCLUSIONS: As compared to non-Ramadan baseline, Ramadan was associated with substantial changes in overall census and in proportions of various patient subgroups. Therefore, Emergency Department's serving large Muslim population should undertake studying major operations changes that can be expected for the month.