High quality chest compressions and defibrillation are two of the most meaningful interventions in a cardiac arrest1. If you have taken Advanced Cardiac Life Support (ACLS), you’ve heard the mantra “I’m clear, you’re clear, everybody’s clear.”1 During delivery of a shock, valuable seconds of chest compressions are lost. This pause in chest compression translates to a decrease in coronary perfusion pressure, one of the largest predictors of return of spontaneous circulation (ROSC).2 After chest compressions resume, …
Dr. Google isn’t the colleague you’d like it to be
“Well, I looked up my symptoms on Google, and it said I was having a heart attack”, we’ve all had this patient interaction before. We live in an era where information is so freely and easily accessible. The danger comes in determining the intrinsic accuracy of data. An recent study has suggested that researching symptoms online is more likely to make one feel worse, and less informed. While this is of no surprise to …
Blood and Clots Series: Does my complex patient have DIC?
All the content from the Blood & Clots series can be found here. CanMEDS Roles addressed: Expert Case Description You are seeing a 56M in your critical care suite who has just arrived as a transfer from a peripheral hospital. The patient has had a recent diagnosis of acute leukemia and was given chemotherapy and a recent stem cell transplant 20 days ago at this hospital. When he started getting sicker, they requested …