It's no secret that we have a major opioid problem in the United States.  The number of people addicted to opioids has reached epidemic proportions and we are certainly seeing this everyday in the Emergency Department.  In this episode Dr. Sheyna Gifford discusses a few facts about the scope of this epidemic,  the basics of recognizing opioid overdose, and initial stabilization and treatment.  She'll discuss the many different ways of using naloxone (aka Narcan) that we can utilize to wake up patients safely and without precipitating acute withdrawal.

EM Basic is back with a re-broadcast from the awesome podcast Pediatric Emergency Playbook by Dr. Tim Horeczko.  Tim is a double boarded in EM and Peds EM and works at Harbor-UCLA hospital.  This was the first episode he published at the beginning of September and it is pure gold.  Tim goes beyond the febrile neonate and talks about how to consider all possible causes for a sick infant- not just anchoring on sepsis the whole time!  Tim presents a rational and systematic approach on how to deal with these young sick patients that get our anxiety and our adrenaline levels through the roof.

This is part 2 of the Heme Onc Emergencies series.  This episode will talk about common hematology emergencies that we see in the ED.  Sickle cell disease will be its own episode but this episode will talk about the approach to anemia in the ED, as well as the approach to hemophilias, ITP and TTP.  While you will see lots of anemic patients in the ED, the other diseases are rare but we have to be on the look out for them and know what to do.

This is the first of a two part series on Heme-Onc Emergencies.  In this episode, we'll discuss oncology emergencies to include neutropenic fever, tumor lysis syndrome, malignant spinal cord compression and malignant pericardial effusion.  Neutropenic fever is a common chief complaint for patients on chemotherapy so we have to be good at this chief complaint.

Today's episode is another installment of the EM Basic Project.  Dr. Sheyna Gifford and Dr. Chrisanna Mink will talk about measles.  This is a disease that we thought we had stamped out long ago with vaccination but the rise of the anti-vaccine movement has caused several small outbreaks so we need to be ready and on the lookout.  They will discuss how to recgonize measles, how to order the right testing and treatment, how to properly disposition these patients and the importance of getting your public health colleagues involved.

Today marks the 4th anniversary of the EM Basic podcast.  To celebrate this occasion, we are going to do a screencast on aortic dissection.  This is a very challenging disease to diagnose because patients have lots of different presentations that can make it difficult to diagnose.  We'll talk about the common presentations of dissection, the not-so-common presentations, how to order the right imaging, how to treat these patients in the ED, and how to get them to the right level of care.

Today marks the 4th anniversary of the EM Basic podcast.  To celebrate this occasion, we are going to do a screencast on aortic dissection.  This is a very challenging disease to diagnose because patients have lots of different presentations that can make it difficult to diagnose.  We'll talk about the common presentations of dissection, the not-so-common presentations, how to order the right imaging, how to treat these patients in the ED, and how to get them to the right level of care.

Today's episode of EM Basic will review vaginal bleeding in patients who are not pregnant.  This is a much different workup from pregnant patients with vaginal bleeding so we have to know how to effectively manage this chief complaint.

This episode was written and recorded by Dr. Adaira Landry, an EM senior resident at NYU/Bellevue and Joe Kennedy, a 4th year medical student at Mayo who matched into EM just after this episode was recorded.  They'll review what vital signs to look out for, the important parts of this history and physical, what labs and imaging to order (if any), and the proper disposition of patients with this chief complaint.

Today's episode will cover Tactical Combat Casualty Care (TCCC), aka Care Under Fire, aka Care in the Immediately Unsafe Environment.  Dr. Andy Bohn, a residency colleague, recorded today's episode to talk about the basics of taking care of any patient in an unsafe environment.  While the military connotations of this may make you uncomfortable, the techniques and protocols he discusses can be directly translated into any civilian mass casualty scenario such as the Boston Marathon bombing or the fertilizer plant explosion in West, Texas.  Andy will discuss how to stay safe in these hostile environments, how to perform the right interventions that will save lives while elimintating the useless interventions that won't (I'm looking at you- c-collars...), and how to get the casualty to the next level of care safely.

EM Basic is back with a brand new episode.  Today's episode was done by Dylan Norton and David Murphy, both 4th year medical students at the University of Colorado Medical School.  We see epistaxis a lot in the ED and while most of it is mild and self limiting, there are frequently cases that take a lot of skill to manage.  They'll talk about the basics of the history and physical with epistaxis, how to order the necessary lab tests, how to manage any case of epistaxis in a step-wise manner, and some newer areas of research.