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Pulmonary embolism (PE) is not an uncommon disease, and is easily misdiagnosed, resulting in litigation against emergency department (ED) physicians. This article will use legal cases to illustrate medical caveats regarding PE.
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In mechanically ventilated ICU patients, availability of music via headphones resulted in a greater reduction in anxiety and sedation exposure.
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In this study, closed-loop, titrated pressure support ventilation was associated with a significantly shorter time course until patients passed a spontaneous breathing trial and were successfully extubated compared to a standardized weaning protocol.
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This large, multicenter, quality improvement project showed a dramatic reduction in mortality among patients with severe sepsis or septic shock after implementation of a sepsis treatment bundle.
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This was a comprehensive, interdisciplinary, 2-year quality improvement project to reduce continuous sedation infusions and improve the recognition and prevention of delirium in patients with acute lung injury. It resulted in less infusion use, more days per patient without sedation, and more patient days awake and not delirious, although the median proportion of days with delirium per patient actually increased.
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An emergency physician (EP) caring for a 62-year-old man after a motor vehicle accident interpreted the chest X-ray as negative. The radiologist overreading the chest films the next day noted a left lung nodule, but the patient was never notified.
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Psychiatric patients boarded in EDs awaiting available beds present significant liability risks for emergency physicians (EPs) for several reasons, according to Leslie Zun, MD, MBA, chair of the Department of Emergency Medicine at Mount Sinai Hospital in Chicago, IL
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Infectious diseases account for a significant percentage of emergency department (ED) visits each year and are frequent sources of litigation. A plaintiff verdict or settlement is usually based on a delay in diagnosis and subsequent substandard treatment. It is important to recognize specific infectious entities early to avoid medical-legal exposure. We present five cases of infectious disease malpractice that highlight pearls and pitfalls.
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n their 1985 article The Chronically Critically Ill: To Save or Let Die?, Girard and Raffin created the term chronically critically ill to describe patients admitted to an ICU who survived their acute insults but remained dependent on intensive care therapies.
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This multicenter, randomized controlled trial compared daily B-type natriuretic peptide (BNP) measurements as a way to guide fluid management with usual care in patients undergoing weaning from mechanical ventilation.
