Dhimitri A Nikolla, DO, PGY-4 LECOM-Erie CASE An elderly male with a past medical history of dementia, on warfarin for a remote history of pulmonary embolism, presented via ambulance from a skilled nursing facility due to the facility’s reports of altered mental status and decreased oral intake. On [...]
Frank Wheeler, OMS-IV LECOM-Bradenton Introduction A middle-aged male complaining of resolved chest pain presents to the emergency department (ED). His physical examination is normal. His electrocardiogram (EKG) is seen in Figure 1 and cardiac enzymes were normal as well. The patient is determined t [...]
Pediatric cardiopulmonary arrest (PCA) is a rare event; it occurs out-of-hospital in about 8.04 per 100,000 person-years compared to 126.52 per 100,000 person-years in adults [1]. As expected, the mortality is high; one study found one month survival of pediatric out-of-hospital cardiac arrest (OHCA) to be 10.5%, while another study found survival to discharge of pediatric in-hospital cardiac arrest (IHCA) to be 31.3% [2,3]. Achieving higher rates of survival is dependent on many factors in the chain of survival, but the performance of good quality cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) has been shown to be directly associated with survival. In this article, we will define quality CPR in the pediatric patient, review some studies linking certain aspects of CPR with survival in PCA, and review some adjuncts to improve CPR performance.