Welcome to "Last Week Now," where we summarize all the education that we covered last week. Last week we reviewed ventilator waveforms, ultrasound for dyspnea, a giant balloons to help stop GI bleeding, and an A.I. poem on resuscitation?!
So we hope you're ready....to review some great resus content....it's time for Last Week, NOW!
This IG clip was an excerpt from this week's podcast talking about "A Curious Case of Dyspnea". In this clip Anand "the Swami" Swaminathan discussed how ultrasound can be helpful for the patient with undifferentiated dyspnea. Lung ultrasound can help identify pulmonary edema, pneumonia, pneumothorax and so much more. Lung ultrasound has been shown to be superior to CXR in many studies without delays and radiation. We have a quite a few videos from prior ResusX conferences that cover lung ultrasound. Check out the clip here.
I recently had a really bad GI bleed come into the ICU. So bad, it needed a Blakemore tube. If you're thinking of a Blakemore tube, this is a BAD bleed. Don't rely on GI to place these because time is of the essence and YOU might be the one placing this tube.
Fortunately, Jess Mason from EM:RAP has a great video summarizing how to place this tube so you'll be ready if you ever need to perform this life-saving procedure. I highly recommend you watch this video on your down time and then bookmark it for when you need it in real time. Watch it below.
The Critical Care Lounge was live again last week and we spoke about ventilator waveform analysis. This is perhaps one of the most underrated skills in critical care but if you manage patients on vents, then you gotta know this!
Dr. Obi Anozi was our special guest and we went through everything that you need to know to analyze waveforms. We talked about:
- the basics of a mechanical breath
- ineffective effort
- auto-triggering
- double triggering
- reverse triggering
- flow starvation
- breath stacking
- and more
Dr. Anozie took us through these waveforms so that you can identify asynchrony in your patient on your next shift.
I Want to Listen To the PodCast!EMS contacted our medical team with a 26-year-old male patient who has a history of bad asthma and has been intubated before. The patient is hypertensive, tachycardic, and appears to be in bad respiratory distress. Is it asthma? What else could it be?
Dr. Anand Swaminathan and I go through a great case of dyspnea and discuss a 2023 approach to this patient including the use of point of care ultrasound. This was a great talk with Swami and highlights many important points on how we should be approaching the undifferentiated dyspneic patient.
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That's it for Last Week Now! Don't forget to check back next week. In the meantime, enjoy this resuscitation poem written by Chat-GPT
A Resus Rhyme
"When life's light begins to fade,
We jump into action, not afraid.
Compressions, breaths, we give it our all,
To bring back a pulse, to hear a heart's call.
We work as a team, with one goal in sight,
To make sure that patient sees another night.
It's not always easy, but we never give in,
We'll bring them back, or we'll die trying, amen.
So if you see us in action, don't be alarmed,
We're just doing our job, we won't be harmed.
And if we bring your loved one back to life,
Please don't forget to thank us,
...we like high-fives."
