Acute mental status changes after the ingestion of alcohol or other substances are a common presentation to the ED. Those with severe obtundation may require intubation for airway protection while the substance metabolizes. In fact, more than 20,000 patients are intubated each year in the United States for acute poisoning or intoxication. Notwithstanding, intubation and mechanical ventilation are not benign procedures. In this podcast we discuss the recently published NICO Trial, that evaluated a strategy of withholding intubation in patients with coma due to acute poisoning.
The care of patients with return of spontaneous circulation following cardiac arrest centers on optimizing oxygenation and ventilation, optimizing hemodynamics, identifying patients that require...
Emergency physicians intubate critically ill patients daily. Unfortunately, up to 17% of ED intubations can be complicated by peri-intubation hypoxemia, hypotension, and cardiac arrest....
In 2017, Paul Marik published a single-center retrospective before-and-after study that demonstrated significant mortality benefit to patients with septic shock who received a cocktail...