More info- Airway and How to give a good ED patient presentation

Hey everybody,

Just an extra post to add some great extra info onto the airway podcast and the most recent one on How to give a good ED patient presentation.

First- the airway podcast.  During that episode, I mentioned a lot of techniques advocated by Dr. Richard Levitan.  I’ve been to several of his lectures and they taught me so much about how to approach an airway.  I was disappointed that I couldn’t share one of his lectures when I was doing the airway podcast but no more.  Scott Weingart from the EMCrit podcast posted a 75 minute video of a lecture that he gave on airway during grand rounds at Mount Saini and it is fantastic.  If you want to learn about all of the techniques that I was advocating from the master himself- drop what you are doing and watch this lecture.  It will change how you approach an airway.

EMCrit episode #70- Airway Management with Rich Levitan

EM Basic podcast on Airway (we’re not worthy!)

Second- also for the airway podcast.  Dr. Levitan references a paper that he recently wrote with Scott Weingart on how to effectively pre-oxygenate patients before and even during intubation.  If you are following me on Twitter you’ve probably already seen this but if you haven’t read it- stop what you are doing and read it.  I predict these techniques will soon become standard of care and will make your intubations much safer by avoiding hypoxia.  I’m even contemplating doing a mini-podcast on the techniques that the paper advocates because I think they are so important.  The paper is a quick read but its a game changer and its available for free on the Annals of Emergency Medicine website.

Preoxygenation and Prevention of Desaturation During Emergency Airway Management

Finally- a few reader comments and a twitter posting on the How to give a good ED patient presentation podcast.  A listener name Javier left a comment with links to two papers that have other great tips on how to give a good ED patient presentation

1. Reuben Strayer, MD: How to think like an emergency medicine physician.
http://emupdates.com/2010/09/15/screencast-how-to-think-like-an-emergency-physician/

2. The 3-minute emergency medicine medical student presentation: a variation on a theme.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18691216

And on twitter- David Marcus who goes by the handle @EMIMDoc had one caveat to add to my differential diagnosis list of “3 life threats followed by what you think it is.”  His take- DDx – 3 deadly, 2 zebras, 2 most likely.  I like it- its more complete and shows that you have the zebras in mind.

That’s it for this update but I’ve got one more for today- the results of the EM Basic survey and the poster presentation from CORD-EM Academic Assembly

-Steve