LITFL - Review of The Best

LITFL come together once in a while to summarise the big #FOAMed highlights.

Welcome to the 226th LITFL Review! Your regular and reliable source for the highest highlights, sneakiest sneak peeks and loudest shout-outs from the webbed world of emergency medicine and critical care. Each week the LITFL team casts the spotlight on the blogosphere’s best and brightest and deliver a bite-sized chuck of FOAM.

Core EM features a surprisingly valuable video this week on how to set up an arterial line. A great post teaching the logistics of resuscitation. [AS]

Here’s a really great case, with even better images. Become more aware of this life-threatening condition in Ultrasound of the Week 69. [SO]

The Best of #FOAMed Emergency Medicine

• First 10 in EM reviews its top articles for March including bactrim in abscesses, NSAIDs in renal colic and trying to finally answer the question of whether you can use cell phones near medical equipment. [CC]
• Sticking with the ‘best papers in’ theme.  This month’s crop from HEFT is cardiac-themed, with diagnosis of HF, O2 in MI and post arrest prognostication discussed.  There’s some awesome US focus (pardon the pun) on B-lines too……[CC]
• Ketamine for excited delirium?  Think it’s all wrapped up? TPR has an informative discussion piece on a recent study of 1300 patients using Special-K as a rescue for this sub group of patients [CC]
• A great piece on the patient with dizziness from emDocs, helping to structure the approach to an often vague presentation. [SL]

The Best of #FOAMcc Critical Care

• Josh Farkas talks about the use of oral midodrine to help wean patients off vasopressors and accelerate liberation from the ICU. [SR]
• CanadiEM features a guest post from Justin Morgenstern on the First 10 in severe asthmamanagement. [AS]
• The Bottom Line take on the DAhLIA trial looking at Dexmedetomidine for ICU sedation this week. There’s some excellent discussion in the comments too. Is this a game-changer? [SO]

The Best of #FOAMus Ultrasound

• 5 Minute Sono offers a quick instructional video on how to measure the Optic Nerve Sheath Diameter (ONSD). [AS]

The Best of #FOAMped Paediatrics

•  Rory Spiegel reviews a recent publication of ultrasound vs CXR in the diagnosis of pneumonia. [SR]

The Best of Medical Education and Social Media

• St. Emlyn’s discusses the “Illusion of Frequency” and the dangers it creates through biasing clinicians. [AS]
• Mary Haas and the ALiEM Team release their new IDEA Series: Ideas in Didactics and Educational Activities. [SR]
• Damian Roland encourages you to be the boss of your own presentations and discusses death by powerpoint rather than life through slides. [CC]
• DFTB has managed to make the APLS PAC conference videos FOAMed.  In this first Terry Brown discusses the qualities of a good educator. [CC]
• Scott Weingart walks us through the OODA Loop (Observe, Orient, Decide, & Act). A simply framework for thinking. [SR]
  
  

News from the Fast Lane

• Check out what’s new amongst the 1,650+ pages of the Critical Care Compendium in CCC Update 014 [CN]
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Reference Sources and Reading List

• Emergency Medicine and Critical Care blog/podcast list
• LITFL Global Blogroll
• FOAMEM RSS feed syndication for global FOAM
• Twitter: #FOAMed – #FOAMcc – #FOAMtox – #FOAMped – #FOAMus – #FOAMim – #FOANed

Brought to you by:

• • Anand Swaminathan [AS] (EM Lyceum, iTeachEM)
  • Brent Thoma [BT] (BoringEM and Academic Life in EM)
  • Chris Connolly [CC]
  • Chris Nickson [CN] ( iTeachEM, RAGE, INTENSIVE and SMACC)
  • Jesse Spurr [JS] (Injectable Orange)
  • Marjorie Lazoff [ML]
  • Mat Goebel [MG]
  • Salim Rezaie [SR] (REBEL EM, The Teaching Institute)
  • Segun Olusanya [SO] (JICSCast)
  • Simon Laing [SL] (HEFTEMCast)