Introduction Emergency department (ED) medicine is a specialty that faces unique medical and organizational challenges. Emergency department staff must treat a wide variety of acute injuries and illnesses in a rapid and expedient manner to ensure optimal patient care. This makes logistical organization arguably more...

The value of early (prehospital) blood glucose testing for trauma victims

Frequent point-of-care creatinine measurement in the critically ill allows early prediction of AKI

One of the most significant developments in laboratory medicine over the past few decades has been application of point-of-care testing (POCT). Technological advance allows an ever-increasing repertoire of in vitro diagnostic and monitoring tests to be performed outside the laboratory, at the patient’s bedside, in the ...

Disturbance of blood calcium concentration is a common feature of many critical illnesses; prevalence studies suggest for example that 50-85 % of patients admitted to intensive/critical care have some degree of hypocalcemia (reduced blood calcium concentration). So monitoring and correction of blood calcium, where...

Decreased resources coupled with increased demand represents a major problem for healthcare providers that is most publicly manifest in overstretched hospital emergency room (ER) departments around the world. Prolonged waiting times and extended periods of overcrowding in ER, which are increasingly the norm, result in ...

Transfusion of donated (allogenic) red blood cells is of undoubted life-saving benefit to those suffering rapid and massive blood loss (hemorrhage) due to major trauma, or complications during surgery and childbirth. However, the procedure is not without risk, and accumulated evidence over the past 2 decades has...

Calculation-based approaches to determining oxygen saturation, as used in some point-of-care tests, increasingly deviate from values measured directly by CO-oximetry as the partial pressure of oxygen in the blood decreases. Oxygen saturation should be measured by CO-oximetry when inaccuracies in calculations may...

This article explores the potential benefits of point-of-care testing in the ED. Price and St. John provide a detailed description on how to approach four common aspects of point-of-care testing (POCT) in the ED, specifically, the challenges of adopting POCT, the impact of POCT on clinical decisions, the impact of...

The physiological stress response to critical illness and trauma determines that transiently raised blood glucose (hyperglycemia) is common among those admitted to intensive care, irrespective of their diabetes status. Much research has been directed at establishing whether or not intensive insulin therapy aimed at...