Research and Reviews in the Fastlane 099

This study took a sample from healthy pregnant patients (n=760) at different stages of gestation. They found, unsurprisingly, that d-dimer increases with gestational age, congruent with limited prior literature. They propose a continuous increasing d-dimer in pregnancy. With PE experts such as Dr. Kline proposing gestation adjusted d-dimer, this is a research space to watch. Recommended by: Lauren Westafer Systems and administration Del Portal DA, et al. Impact of an Opioid Prescribing Guideline in the Acute Care Setting. J Emerg Med 2015. PMID: 26281819 As many EDs implement voluntary opioid prescribing guidelines, this study is the first of it’s kind to examine outcomes after doing so. The prescription opioid abuse epidemic in the U.S. is a well known problem and a black eye on the face of medicine as it’s an issue we created in an attempt to alleviate the suffering of our patients. Unfortunately, the pendulum clearly swung too far to the side of liberal distribution and we are now dealing with the consequences of over prescribing. The authors in this study detail their experience implementing a voluntary guideline at multiple ED sites. They found that opioid prescriptions for dental, neck, back, or unspecified chronic pain decreased from 52.7% before the guideline to 29.8% immediately after its introduction, and to 33.8% at an interval of 12 to 18 months later. Additionally, 100% of ED faculty supported the guideline. Importantly, providers were able to ʺove...
Source: Life in the Fast Lane - Category: Emergency Medicine Authors: Tags: Anaesthetics Cardiology Education Emergency Medicine Haematology Intensive Care critical care literature R&R in the FASTLANE recommendations research and reviews Source Type: blogs