Tag Archives: Coffee and Cases

Coffee and Cases Snippets: Don’t Leave Me In Suspense

By Raphael Dworkin, HEMS registrar. Every morning our team discusses cases over coffee. Here is a useful snippet… Fictional Vignette– 52M rally car driver accidentally clips a tyre wall causing his car to flip upside down at low speed. It … Continue reading

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Top 10 Coffee and Cases Snippets from April 2023

Thanks for a great month of case discussion!The C+C QI project team

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Coffee and Cases Snippets: Intubating the patient with a HAGMA

Every morning our team discusses cases over coffee. Here is a useful snippet… Patients with a severe high anion gap metabolic acidosis (e.g. from severe DKA, AKI, toxic ingestions, severe lactataemia from bleeding/sepsis/some other form of badness) have a markedly … Continue reading

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OXY’s LOG – ‘Between shock and a hard place…’

Cardiogenic shock – occurs in 10% of uncomplicated myocardial infarctions, suggests greater than 40% loss of functional left ventricule and has an 85% mortality.1, 2  John Hunter, a famous London surgeon during the 18th century, described his personal experience of myocardial infarction. … Continue reading

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OXY’s LOG – ‘Anisocoria and Stardust…’

Take caution if you ever get tasked to a pre-hospital trauma at David Bowie’s house. His reduced level of consciousness and blown pupil might just be due to a copious amount of mind-bending drugs and the accident as a school-boy … Continue reading

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OXY’s LOG – ‘Tourner sur une nouvelle feuille de route…’

The term tourniquet originated from the French ‘‘tourner’’ meaning ‘‘to turn”. The first reported use of a tourniquet for haemorrhage control after wounding was by a french army surgeon called Etienne Morel in 1674. 1  . . Tourniquets: villain or … Continue reading

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OXY’s LOG – ‘Blue-lights and Sirens…’

In Greek mythology, the Sirens were dangerous creatures, portrayed as femme fatales who drowned sailors with their enchanting music and voices.1 Drowning is a process resulting in primary respiratory impairment from submersion /immersion in a liquid medium.2 . A liquid/air interface … Continue reading

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OXY’s LOG – ‘That tricky fella, human error…’

‘Errare humanum est’  Adapted by Alexander Pope1 in 1711 into the famous quote: ‘To err is human, to forgive divine.’ Case: A MVA victim (later retrieved by GSA-HEMS) comes into a rural trauma unit with a head injury and facial fractures. They need … Continue reading

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OXY’s LOG – ‘Sadly just too big a hole in that pearl…’

Clam shell thoracotomy – Indications and outcomes Case: A multiple gun shot wound victim was found at the roadside barely conscious. He was intubated, ventilated and given bilateral thoracostomies by our HEMS crew. He went into cardiac arrest and so … Continue reading

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OXY’s LOG – ‘Sux it, don’t stroke it…’

Succinylcholine and the hemiplegic patient (This is a follow-up post to a previous blog regarding Suxamethonium and neurological disorders). The hemiplegic patient does indeed present a risk. There are a number of case reports of stroke patients arresting on the … Continue reading

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