treatment

Asthma, infection and the World Anti-Doping Agency: a case study

A medical model approach was used to examine the patient, which consisted of thorough history taking (Douglas, Nichol and Robertson 2013). This indicated a one-week history of productive cough with...

Therapeutic hypothermia in cardiac arrest

It is important to understand how the body is affected at the time of cardiac arrest and during the reperfusion that occurs following successful resuscitation. While achieving a ROSC in OHCA is not a...

‘Secondary spine injury’: how language affects future research and treatment

Early studies on the management of spinal trauma paid close attention to how they defined secondary injury. In a case series from 1966, Geisler et al aimed specifically to determine the frequency of...

End-tidal CO2 monitoring in the pre-hospital environment: more than just endotracheal tube placement confirmation

Measurement of carbon dioxide in expired ventilation gases has been used in anaesthesia practice since the late 1970s (Sinclair, 1998) and is mandatory practice in anaesthesia departments across the...

Pre-hospital treatment of supraventricular tachycardia: a literature review

A research question was designed using the PICO process with a systematic Boolean search methodology. A MeSH (Medical Subject Heading) search was carried out on ‘paramedic’ and ‘pre-hospital’ to...

Essex and Herts Air Ambulance: a focused case series for pre-hospital practice

The EHAAT doctor-paramedic team were dispatched to a 10-year-old girl who had been struck by a medium-sized van travelling at an unknown speed. Upon arrival of the first ambulance crew, the patient...

Can paramedics treat sepsis?

The Pre-hospital Piperacillin/Tazobactam (PrePip) project tested the concept that UK paramedics could accurately recognise sepsis, aseptically take blood cultures, and safely and rapidly treat septic...

A pilot study exploring the accuracy of pre-hospital sepsis recognition in the North East Ambulance Service

It is estimated there are at least 100 000 cases of severe sepsis each year in the UK, although the true prevalence of sepsis may be higher due to under recognition (Cronshaw et al, 2011). Mortality...

A critical analysis and appraisal of the management of croup in the UK out-of-hospital environment

Croup is a common respiratory infection with an incidence of around 3% of the paediatric population per year, most commonly affecting children between 6–36 months and more commonly males than females...

Intra-cardiac arrest thrombolysis in the pre-hospital setting: four cases worth considering

This young man had recently taken up jogging. On the evening before his collapse he complained of a painful calf and presumed that he had pulled a muscle. The next morning when he awoke he still had...