Over the last few weeks, we covered pediatric coughs, finishing with pediatric pneumonia.  This week, we will continue along this trend and discuss community acquired pneumonia (CAP) in the adult population.

Your nurse approaches you and says there is a new patient who arrived via EMS with shortness of breath. And his o2 sat is 65% on nasal canula. That gets you out of your chair and into the room in a hurry and you wrack your brain for the various causes of acute onset hypoxia as you enter the room (and no, it's not Covid-19!)

What exactly is drowning? What do we need to worry about in drowning injuries? How do we manage them in the ED? 

You've diagnosed your patient with a PE! Now what?

Blood thinners? tPA? Other options?

Let's review some of the basics of PE management in the ED.

Asthma is one of the most common causes of respiratory distress seen in the emergency department. Most often, our patients will get better with some nebulizers and steroids. But when this fails, treatment becomes more complicated and patients can decompensate quickly. What are your options to step up therapy in your most severe asthma cases?

The YEARS Algorithm: A clinical decision tool that incorporates differential D-Dimer cutoff values at presenation, developed to be fast and reduce the number of CTPA investigations

Three YEARS Items:

Residents review literature to answer the clinical question "Is needle aspiration as effective as thoracostomy tube in non-traumatic pneumothorax?". See the literature review below