Paediatric seizures are common, time-critical events and they're something most of us will deal with, whether that's pre-hospital, in the emergency department, or on the ward. They make up around 1–2% of ED attendances, and about 1 in 20 children will have a seizure at some point. Most seizures self-terminate, but the longer they go on the harder they are to stop, and the higher the risk of harm. In paediatric seizures, time really matters.

In this episode we take a step-by-step look at how to assess and manage a child who's seizing. We start with the fundamentals; how seizures are defined and classified, what status epilepticus actually means in practice, and why recognising it early makes such a difference.

We then dig into the physiology behind seizures, exploring why early benzodiazepines work well and why delayed treatment often doesn't. Understanding what's happening at a receptor level helps make sense of when to escalate treatment and why different drugs work at different stages of a prolonged seizure.

Pharmacology is a big part of this episode. We talk through first- and second-line anti-seizure medications, routes of administration, and how effective they really are. We cover the EcLiPSE and ConSEPT trials comparing levetiracetam and phenytoin, and look at newer evidence from the Ket-Mid study and what that might mean for managing refractory status and thinking about RSI.

We also work through the approach to cases, pre-hospital management and in-hospital care aligned with UK and European recommendations. There's a clear focus on febrile seizures too, separating simple from complex presentations and helping you decide who needs investigating, admitting, or reassuring and discharging.

As ever, the aim is to turn guidelines and evidence into something usable on the shop floor. Paediatric seizures are stressful, but with a structured approach, early treatment, and good airway management, they're absolutely manageable and we can make a real difference on outcomes.

Once again we'd love to hear any thoughts or feedback either on the website or via X @TheResusRoom!

Simon, Rob & James

Welcome to January's Papers of the Month, which marks 10 years of the podcast!

First up, we look at a large multicentre cohort study from the East of England examining the association between prehospital post-intubation hypotension and mortality in severe traumatic brain injury. Preventing secondary brain injury sits at the centre of what we're try to achieve in early TBI care, but this paper quantifies the impact of post-RSI hypotension in a dramatic way and the associated increase in 30-day mortality.

Our second paper moves into the world of stable supraventricular tachycardia, asking whether an elevated troponin level in this cohort predicts short-term cardiovascular events. Troponin testing in SVT is common but debated: is it useful, or is it a diagnostic red herring?

Finally, we look at BICARICU-2, a major multicentre RCT examining sodium bicarbonate for severe metabolic acidemia in patients with moderate–severe AKI. We explore what this means for bicarbonate use for this group of patient, both in terms of mortality rates and the need for renal replacement therapy.

Once again we'd love to hear any thoughts or feedback either on the website or via X @TheResusRoom!

Simon & Rob

Welcome to this special edition of Roadside to Resus where we're diving into some of the progressive and practice-defining developments in pre-hospital emergency care. This episode brings together a superb group of clinicians, educators and leaders who are shaping the future of PHEM across the UK, and we caught up with them at the recent Faculty of Pre-hospital Care Conference entitled 'The Wider World of Pre-hospital Care'!

We start with Pam Hardy, the Chair of the FPHC, who offers an introduction to the College and its ongoing work to elevate standards across pre-hospital care.

Next, Camella Main guides us through the brand-new Pre-hospital Maternity Decision Tool designed to support clinicians facing complex decision making in this complex group of patients. Camella breaks down how the tool came to fruition and how teams can use it to enhance safety and decision-making on scene.

We then hear from Ben Sheppey, who explores the growing move to formalise and professionalise voluntary pre-hospital care. Ben reflects on the challenges, opportunities and cultural shifts required to align voluntary responders with national standards.

Harriet Tucker then walks us through the new FPHC consensus statement on managing penetrating neck injuries. She distils the key principles, the recommendations, and how the guidance aims to bring clarity to one of the most complex and time-critical presentations we face.

From there, Cosmo Scurr unpacks the latest AAGBI PHEA Guideline, highlighting the key movements in delivering anaesthesia in the pre-hospital environment.

We also hear from Felix Wood, who provides a sharp, practical look at crush injury and crush syndrome.

Finally, Zane Perkins explores the rapidly advancing world of AI in PHEM. From practical application to decision making support. Zane describes how emerging technologies have the potential to change prehospital care in ways we may have never considered before!

A huge thanks to the expert speakers for their time recording highlights from the superb conference.

Once again we'd love to hear any thoughts or feedback either on the website or via X @TheResusRoom!

Simon, Rob & James

December brings us to the final Papers of the Month for 2025 and we're finishing the year with three studies that challenge assumptions across critical care and resuscitation! This time questioning the role of arterial lines in shock, looking at the true prognostic value of end-tidal CO₂ in cardiac arrest and finally to airway management in neonates.

We start in the ICU with the EVERDAC trial, a large multicentre RCT exploring whether early arterial catheterisation in shock truly changes outcomes. This challenges some of the papers we've recently looked at recently which champion the benefit of early arterial line insertion! The EVERDAC trial looks at the effect they have on mortality and the results are pretty striking.

Next, we move into the world of cardiac arrest with a systematic review and meta-analysis examining end-tidal CO₂ as a prognostic tool for ROSC. ETCO₂ is firmly embedded in ALS practice, but its real predictive power isn't completely clear, as we've seen in the recent ERC guidelines. This review pulls together studies with more than 3,000 patients and helps us understand more how much weight we should give to ETCO₂ and the way in which it's best utilised.

Finally, we finish with a neonatal focus: a systematic review and meta-analysis comparing video versus direct laryngoscopy for urgent neonatal intubation. Success rates in NICU and delivery room intubation are notoriously low. This paper looks at the impact of video laryngoscopy on first pass success with some dramatic results, which raises important questions around training and resource allocation.

Three papers, three very different patient groups, and three opportunities to reflect on how evidence continues to challenge our practice.

Once again we'd love to hear any thoughts or feedback either on the website or via X @TheResusRoom!

Simon & Rob

Whether you're just stepping into your first cardiac arrest or you've been running them since the days of paddles, this one's for you. The 2025 resuscitation guidelines have landed after further collaboration between ILCOR, the ERC and the Resuscitation Council UK and in this episode we break down exactly what's new, what's stayed the same, and how it all fits into day-to-day practice.

Across the board the 2025 updates represent evolution, a steady refinement of evidence rather than wholesale change. Adult ALS remains rooted in early recognition, high-quality compressions and rapid defibrillation, but you'll notice sharper guidance around ventilation, pad positioning, and the sequence of vascular access and drugs. There's a new section on physiology-guided CPR and the emerging science behind arterial-line-driven resuscitation as we covered in the SPEAR epsiode.

We also take a look at the special circumstances algorithms from hypothermia to traumatic and obstetric arrest and discuss how an emphasis on reversible causes, data-driven debriefing and system performance might reshape post-event learning.

Paediatric and newborn life support see subtle but important refinements too, including pad placement, shock energy escalation, simplification of adrenaline timings and a new Out-of-Hospital Newborn Life Support algorithm aimed squarely at the pre-hospital world. All this and more in the episode!

Once again we'd love to hear any thoughts or feedback either on the website or via X @TheResusRoom!

Simon, Rob & James

This month we've got four cracking UK-led studies that really speak to how pre-hospital and emergency medicine continue to evolve, not just in the kit and skills we use, but in how we think about the whole patient journey.

We'll start with a paper fromAnaesthesia with Pallavicini et al., exploring pre-hospital central venous access for patients in haemorrhagic shock. Drawing on London's Air Ambulance experience, it shows that large-bore central catheters can be placed safely and effectively, delivering earlier transfusion and improved survival to ED arrival. It's high-stakes medicine in extreme circumstances, and this study gives some of the best real-world data we've seen on it.

Next up we look at the impact of a paper that's genuinely changed national practice from Aljanoubi et al. in Resuscitation, looking at what happened after the AIRWAYS-2 trial landed. You'll remember AIRWAYS-2 showed no functional benefit of tracheal intubation over supraglottic airways in OHCA, but did it actually shift behaviour? This registry study of over 70,000 patients shows that it did - and dramatically. The rate of pre-hospital intubation has fallen from around 44 percent in 2014 to 14 percent by 2020, with a clear inflection right after the trial's publication. Real-world proof that evidence can truly change practice.

Then, we turn to two linked Delphi consensus studies from Tim Nutbeam and colleagues, published in the Scandinavian Journal of Trauma, Resuscitation and Emergency Medicine. The first, optimising the care of the trapped patient, develops expert-endorsed principles for managing physically trapped casualties, marking a real shift from "movement-minimisation" to time-sensitive, patient-centred extrication. The second, prioritising time-critical injuries and interventions, complements that work by defining which injuries and treatments truly can't wait — creating a shared language for multi-agency teams at the roadside. Together, these papers show how thoughtful, collaborative UK research is shaping the next generation of trauma and resuscitation care — evidence, consensus, and practice all pulling in the same direction.

These latter two papers are from the team at IMPACT; The Centre for Post-Collision Research, Innovation & Translation. We've been lucky enough to collaborate with the team and deliver an online Extrication course which is now available! A bit about the course;

Fire and Rescue Service personnel, Police officers, community response scheme members, and clinicians who respond to collisions or who wish to update their awareness of consensus extrication guidance.

To improve awareness and adoption of evidence-based, patient-focused extrication principles among operational responders by providing a concise, accessible, and practical educational resource that bridges consensus guidance and real-world operational practice.Learning outcomes:

• Describe the evidence base underpinning contemporary extrication practice.
• Apply a patient-focused approach to decision-making during extrication.
• Employ endorsed decision support tools, including EXIT decision aids, to case-based scenarios.
• Recognise and challenge outdated or unsafe norms in extrication practice.

To find out more about the course head over to Post-Collision

Once again we'd love to hear any thoughts or feedback either on the website or via X @TheResusRoom!

Simon & Rob

How, when and why to make the call…

The pre-alert is one of the most powerful and sometimes most painful parts of emergency care. It can feel like the Spanish Inquisition, trigger tension between pre-hospital and ED teams, or drop another challenge into an already overflowing department. But done well, a pre-alert isn't an irritation; it's an opportunity to line up critical care for the next patient and genuinely improve outcomes.

In this episode, Simon, Rob and James break down The UK NHS Ambulance Services and Emergency Department Pre-Alert Guideline, jointly released in July 2025 by RCEM and the Association of Ambulance Chief Executives. It's the first national attempt to give clear, shared expectations on who to pre-alert, what to say, and how to receive those calls, it's full of practical recommendations for both sides of the phone.

We kick things off with a review of the evidence base, including brand-new studies showing just how varied pre-alert practice is across the UK. From inconsistent criteria and mixed training to the problem of "pre-alert fatigue", the data make a strong case for standardisation.

We then walk through the new guideline's key principles: pre alerting for pre-specified physiological parameters or specific conditions.

We finish off with top tips for making and taking better pre-alerts - selling a story, leading with the headline, and understanding what the other side actually needs. This episode combines frontline pragmatism with real-world research and might just make your next pre-alert smoother, faster, and better received.

Once again we'd love to hear any thoughts or feedback either on the website or via X @TheResusRoom!

Simon, Rob & James

This month we've got three really interesting papers that shine a light on aspects of cardiac arrest management that many of us will recognise from clinical practice.

First up, we look at the feasibility of arterial line placement during ongoing cardiac arrest in the Emergency Department. In our SPEAR episode we talked about the balance between securing invasive monitoring versus the potential distraction from other essential parts of resuscitation. This paper takes a pragmatic look at whether arterial access is achievable in that critical period in the Emergency Department, the success rate and the time required.

Next up, we look at a paper that helps to give us a more accurate feel for the rate and predictors of high-risk adverse events for Emergency Department paediatric ketamine sedation.

Our final paper looks at ultrasound during cardiac arrest. Specifically, whether the hands-off time during the pulse check are longer with traditional manual checks or with ultrasound. This systematic review and meta-analysis puts some numbers to the best way to minimising hands-off time.

So whether you're a regular on the arrest team, sedating children, or supporting resuscitation from the periphery, these papers provide some useful food for thought on where our focus should be in those critical minutes.

Once again we'd love to hear any thoughts or feedback either on the website or via X @TheResusRoom!

Simon & Rob

a focus on its acute presentations and the care we can deliver to improve outcomes for our patients.

Sickle cell disease (SCD) is a lifelong inherited blood disorder that affects over 15,000 people in the UK, and millions worldwide. It's caused by the production of abnormal haemoglobin molecules, which distort red blood cells into a crescent, or "sickle," shape. These rigid cells can block small blood vessels, leading to painful vaso-occlusive crises and organ damage.

While the condition has long been most prevalent in parts of Africa, the Middle East, the Mediterranean and India, today it's a global health issue, and one we encounter regularly in UK emergency care. Tragically, failings in care have too often led to avoidable harm. The 2021 parliamentary report "No One's Listening" laid bare some of these cases, highlighting missed opportunities, poor awareness, and systemic issues that cost lives, such as the death of Evan Nathan Smith.

So why are we revisiting this now? In 2024, RCEM published new Best Practice Guidelines on managing sickle cell disease in the ED. These provide clear, evidence-based standards for recognition, triage, analgesia, infection control, and safe discharge. In this episode, we take you through the key elements;

• Pathophysiology – how a genetic mutation drives sickling, vaso-occlusion and inflammation.
• Clinical presentations – from painful crises and acute chest syndrome, to stroke, anaemia, infection, priapism and pregnancy-related complications.
• Recognition and triage – why timely pain control within 30 minutes is a must, and how to spot red flags.
• Investigations and treatment – including the role of reticulocytes, the importance of knowing a patient's baseline haemoglobin, and principles of analgesia, transfusion, oxygen, and supportive care.
• Discharge and ongoing care – ensuring safe, joined-up planning, and involving haematology and specialist pathways wherever possible.

The take-home message? Every sickle cell crisis is a medical emergency. We need to listen to patients, escalate early, involve haematology, and deliver care that meets the standards they deserve.

Once again we'd love to hear any thoughts or feedback either on the website or via X @TheResusRoom!

Simon, Rob & James

Welcome back to September's Papers of the Month. We've got three cracking studies for you this time, each tackling really core questions in pre-hospital and emergency care and each giving us plenty to chew over when it comes to the evidence base and what it means for our practice.

First up, we're heading down under to Sydney with the PRECARE pilot feasibility study on pre-hospital extracorporeal CPR for refractory cardiac arrest. Now, we all know survival from refractory OHCA is pretty dismal with conventional CPR alone, and that the big limiting factor with ECPR is time to flow. So could we meaningfully shorten that window by bringing ECMO to the roadside rather than the hospital? This study tested whether pre-hospital physicians could safely and effectively deliver ECPR on scene and the results are some of the fastest low-flow times yet reported. But of course, feasibility is only one piece of the puzzle…

Next, we're back in the UK with a service evaluation from Devon Air Ambulance looking at endotracheal intubation by critical care paramedics during cardiac arrest. Airway management in OHCA has always been a hot topic, with long-running debates over supraglottic devices versus intubation, and questions about who should be putting a tube in. This six-year dataset explores how structured education, theatre placements, and the introduction of video laryngoscopy have changed practice and whether CCPs can consistently meet the ERC's benchmark of 95% success, or more, within two attempts.

And finally, we're heading to Switzerland with a study on the HOPE score in hypothermic cardiac arrest. Hypothermia remains one of those rare but high-stakes presentations where patients in cardiac arrest can sometimes make remarkable recoveries if we select the right ones for extracorporeal rewarming. The HOPE score is designed to guide those decisions by predicting survival. This study takes a retrospective cohort across two hospitals and asks: does the score actually deliver in real-world practice, and can it help avoid futile attempts at ECLS?

So, three papers, ECMO on the roadside, paramedic-led intubation in cardiac arrest, and the precision of the HOPE score. As ever, plenty to think about for both the evidence and our day-to-day practice.

Once again we'd love to hear any thoughts or feedback either on the website or via X @TheResusRoom!

Simon & Rob