Emergency Medicine
New CPR guidelines emphasise faster chest compressions
New emergency care guidelines developed by the International Liaison Committee on Resuscitation include dramatic changes to CPR and emphasis on chest compressions. The most significant change to CPR is to the ratio of chest compressions to rescue breaths – from 15 compressions for every two rescue breaths in the 2000 guidelines to 30 compressions for every two rescue breaths in the newly updated guidelines. This is the most significant change since CPR’s inception in the early 1960s. [More]
FDA to review regulations allowing emergency research
The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is currently taking a close look at the implementation of its regulation that allows clinical emergency research when informed consent cannot be obtained. This regulation allows the conduct of research studies to test emergency treatments on patients with specific life-threatening medical conditions (head trauma, cardiac arrest, stroke) when patients cannot give informed consent because of their conditions, and family is not available to provide consent either. Such emergency research has been allowed under very restricted circumstances since 1996 when FDA regulations went into effect providing for a narrow exception to the informed consent research requirements. [More]
Increasing concern over clostridium difficile spurs greater research efforts
Clostridium difficile, a bacterium that initially involves alterations of beneficial bacteria in the colon as a result of antibiotic therapy, is now recognised as the major causative agent of colitis and diarrhoea that may occur following antibiotic intake and has become one of the most common infections in hospitals around the globe. [More]
