[Diving accident-induced arterial gas embolism]. / Arteriële gasembolieën na een duikongeval.

BACKGROUND: During scuba diving, nitrogen dissolves into the body tissues due to elevated pressure under water. During a sudden drop in pressure due to a rapid return to the water surface, arterial gas embolism can arise from pulmonary barotrauma. In a later phase, nitrogen bubbles can also arise in the venous circulation (decompression sickness). Arterial bubbles can incur vascular damage, obstruction, hypoxia and infarction. CASE DESCRIPTION: A 53-year-old healthy sport diver presented at the emergency department in a hypovolemic shock with progressive paresis of all the extremities. He had made an emergency ascent from a depth of 47 meter. During recompression therapy his condition deteriorated. It transpired that he had an patent foramen ovale. As a consequence of this, nitrogen bubbles due to decompression sickness entered the arterial circulation. Despite maximum therapeutic intervention the patient remained paretic. CONCLUSION: After an ill-fated dive, this patient with patent foramen ovale contracted arterial gas embolism due to pulmonary barotrauma and, at a later stage, decompression sickness. There was increasing damage to the spinal cord resulting in severe physiological disruption.

[National developments in Emergency Departments in the Netherlands: numbers and origins of patients in the period from 2012 to 2015]. / Landelijke ontwikkelingen in de Nederlandse SEH's.

OBJECTIVE: Gaining insight into key figures of emergency departments (EDs) in the Netherlands and developments in these figures. DESIGN: Longitudinal survey study. METHOD: Over the period from 2012 up to and including 2015, the following key data were surveyed: number of EDs, number of ED patients, ED patients' origin, number of hospital admissions from the ED and form of cooperation between ED and a general practitioner centre (GPC). RESULTS: An average of 96% of all EDs responded. The number of EDs decreased from 93 to 87. The percentage of EDs that maintained a form of cooperation with a GPC in the hospital rose from 49% to 79%. The total number of patients seen annually in an ED in the Netherlands decreased by 128,000 to 1.951 million. The proportion of patients presenting in the ED via ambulance, mobile medical team or 112 (emergency number) increased by 2.6% to 16.0%. The proportion of patients referred from their own GP or GPCs increased by 7.8% to an average of 50.3%. The proportion of self-referrals decreased by 12.6% to 17.4%. The proportion of patients who came up to the ED through a different route remained constant at around 14%. The nationwide variation in the origin of patients remained high. The average percentage of hospital admissions from the ED increased by 5.6% to 37.2%. CONCLUSION: The number of EDs is decreasing and the cooperation between EDs and GPCs has intensified. The number of patients seen in the ED has decreased. The percentage of self-referrals has decreased and the number of hospital admissions from the ED has increased significantly. For a successful and consistent policy, more substantive data on the nature and extent of emergency care in the ED are needed. This requires a national registry.

Comprehensive waste regulation dumped. A limited demonstration project is all that remains.

When medical wastes started washing up along the Eastern Seaboard and the shores of the Great Lakes in 1988, healthcare providers became subject to close public scrutiny. Not only was the situation deplorable; the solution, they feared, would keep them entangled in red tape for years. Public outcry sent members of Congress scurrying to legislate medical waste regulation. But what many had predicted would be a comprehensive, nationwide regulation that tracked medical waste from cradle to grave turned out to be a demonstration project limited to Puerto Rico and four states in the Northeast. The Medical Waste Tracking Act of 1988 went into effect in June 1989. When it expires in June 1991, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) will report to Congress on the program's impact, presumably with an eye toward whether further legislation and continuing regulations are necessary. In the meantime, participating states must establish a system of tracking medical waste from its point of generation to its disposal by either incineration or burial in a landfill. Medical waste generators must separate it from other kinds of waste and place it in special labeled containers. They must also prepare a tracking form that accompanies the cargo and requires sign-off by generator, transporter, and disposal facility operator. The EPA has legal access to medical waste tracking forms and can inspect any site where medical wastes are located. Violators are subject to stiff civil and criminal penalties.