Tis the season for respiratory infections in children. This week's post reviews a few of the important phyical exam findings in a child presenting with respiratory distress. Videos are included! Stay tuned for next week's post that will include some great pearls about bronchiolitis which you are sure to see if you care for pediatric patients!   

A 56 year old male presents to the ED reporting foreign body sensation in his throat after eating a large steak dinner the night before…

Intubation is a potentially dangerous procedure which may result in rapid hemodynamic collapse and cardiac arrest in the critically ill. This week we summarize the results of a large retrospective study to determine the clinical factors associated with cardiac arrest after intubation.

You are caring for a sick patient with an acute COPD exacerbation. What O2 sat should you target? What meds should you give? If you have to intubate, what are the issues you'll have to deal with? This week we glean some valuable management pearls for the management acute COPD exacerbations from this month's Internal Medicine module at Cooper.

“Airway cart to 9A. Intern, this tube is yours. What meds do you want?”

After the initial self-pulse check and change of scrub pants, two words come to mind: SOAP ME. Not in the literal sense, which may or may not be necessary depending on how nervous one is, but in the handy-dandy-easy-to-remember-in-high-pressure-situations-mnemonic sense. The deer-in-headlights (AKA intern-in-headlights look aside), this edition aims to take a look into an expected adverse reaction with a commonly used rapid sequence intubation (RSI) medication: hyperkalemia associated with succinylcholine administration.

This post is a a summary of a portion of Dr Byrne's airway talk from last month's ResusEM conference at the Cooper Medical School of Rowan University. New techniques for preoxygenation before intubation can help to prolong time to desaturation and make this potentially dangerous procedure safer than ever!

Intubation has traditionally been performed with patients in the full supine position. Recent data suggests that elevation of the head of the bed may be more effective during preoxygenation before intubation. Check out this summary of a paper from Anesthesia that put this idea to the test!

The tape measure is a tool we should all consider adding to our tool belts or airway carts. Here’s why!

Are all modes of non-invasive positive pressure ventilation (NIPPV) created equal for the treatment of acute cardiogenic pulmonary edema?  Perhaps not.

You are intubating a sick patient in the ED via direct laryngoscopy. After opening the airway, sweeping the tongue with your blade, inserting into the vallecula, and lifting at the precisely correct angle your eyes behold....well...not the vocal cords! Maybe the arytenoid cartilages if you're lucky (aka Cormack Lehane 3 or 4 view). But wait, you aren't finished yet! You reach into your back pocket and remove your trusty bougie...