View clinical trials related to Emergencies.
Filter by:Urolithiasis is a disease that effects 12% of the population and its incidence is growing. In the US there are over 1.1 million visits annually to Emergency Departments for renal colic. The disease is extremely painful, often requiring large amounts of narcotic analgesia, and results in lost work days. Moreover, up to 30% of patients may eventually require lithotripsy or surgical removal of the stone. Currently there are no medical interventions other than analgesia which are offered to patients. Based on encouraging results from several small European clinical studies, the researchers hypothesize that the administration of tamsulosin to patients with symptomatic urolithiasis will enhance stone passage, and reduce both the time to recovery and the need for surgical intervention or lithotripsy. The researchers will conduct a study by identifying and recruiting patients presenting with urolithiasis in the emergency departments of four institutions. A total of 500 consenting subjects will be randomly assigned to one of two groups: 1. tamsulosin for a maximum of 28 days; 2. placebo for a maximum of 28 days. In addition, both groups will receive standard analgesic therapy. The study team, which will be blinded to treatment status, will monitor each subject's clinical progress and outcome. The primary objectives of this study are: 1. to determine if tamsulosin is effective, and 2. to evaluate the safety of the therapy. Another objective is to identify the most appropriate clinical subgroup(s) for treatment. If the therapeutic benefits observed in smaller clinical studies are replicated, administration of these medications should produce several benefits, including: 1. a reduction in time to pain free recovery and hence a more rapid return to employment; 2. decreased requirements for narcotic analgesia; 3. less need for urological out-patient clinic follow-up; 4. decreased need for surgical intervention or lithotripsy; and 5. substantial cost savings. If this therapy is beneficial, it will represent a major advance in the treatment of urolithiasis. This objective is a major stated goal of the NIDDK (National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases) Clinical Urology Program, which has a stated mission to improve the treatment of urolithiasis. Kidney stones are a major public health issue, and one person in eight will be affected by the disease. If the hypothesis is verified, the researchers will provide the first medical therapy ever for this disease. This therapy, if effective, will reduce the amount of time a patient is off work because of the pain from the disease, and may also reduce the need for expensive and time-consuming surgical treatments.
The purpose of this study is to compare the effectiveness, complications and benefits of Hair Apposition Technique(HAT)performed by nurses or doctors.
The aim of this study is to test the safety and efficacy of a new algorithm for intensive s.c. insulin injection in medical emergency patients with hyperglycaemia (plasma glucose concentration ≥ 8 mmol/l)
This study is designed to assess the effectiveness of the video-based intervention over and above current standard practice for pain control in the pediatric emergency department (ED). This is a single-center trial based at the IWK Health Centre. The primary outcome will be based on the Child-Adult Medical Procedures Interaction Scale (CAMPIS) coding of the video-taped pain response of the research participants (3-5 years old).
What to do after an elderly patient falls but is not seriously injured can be a very challenging decisions for the patient and the Emergency Physician. Unfortunately, homecare support is often unavailable for weeks. The patient and physician must then choose between discharge home without support, or hospitalization. An emergency response service (ERS) allows the patient to summon assistance from anywhere in their home, and may provide another option. Objectives: To see how an ERS affects patients’ anxiety, fear of falling, and use of the health-care system after discharge. We will study patients over 70 years of age who have fallen but do not need to be hospitalized. Our belief is that the ERS will improve patient anxiety, and may prevent return visits to the Emergency or episodes of prolonged immobilization after a fall. Methods: Patients agreeing to participate in the study will be assigned by chance to receive either current standard discharge care, or standard care plus the use of the emergency response system. Patients will be interviewed one month after discharge to compare the impact of the ERS. This study is a first step in deciding whether the ERS is a useful new technology.
A four-level triage scale (the Geneva Emergency Triage Scale, GETS) has been used since 1997 in our emergency department (ED). A recent evaluation of this scale showed that our instrument had an excellent intra-rater reliability but insufficient inter-rater reliability. We also observed a wide variability in the way triage nurses perform (J Clin Epidemiology, 2006 in press). These variations in the triage process are mainly explained by a poor standardization of vital signs measurement. Therefore, we have recently modified our triage instrument and introduced explicit criteria for vital signs evaluation during the triage process. The objectives of this study are: - To evaluate the inter- and intra-rater reliability of our modified triage scale using a computer simulator - To measure the impact of visual clues on the triage decisions when using the triage simulator - To evaluate the performance of triage nurses and chief physicians in their triage decisions. We expect to observe: - an improvement of the inter-rater reliability of our instrument compared to the previous version - a better standardization and more systematic use of vital signs measurement - a higher reliability when visual clues are given to the evaluator - lower rates of under- and over-estimation of emergency levels.
The purpose of this study is to determine the safety and speed of onset of 2mg intravenous hydromorphone (Dilaudid) in patients weighing at least 150 lbs presenting to the emergency department with acute severe pain
The subjects in this study are physicians working in the Wishard Emergency Department. The purpose of this study is to measure the extent to which information technology (i.e.-computers) improves emergency department care. The objective of our study is to evaluate the use of informatics in the emergency department and specifically to determine if computer reminder systems: 1) reduce the number of unsafe medications prescribed to older adults, 2) assist in more safely dosing of medications to adults of all ages, and 3) increase influenza immunization of eligible older patients in the emergency department. Interventions: The interventions in this study are computer reminders. When releasing patients from the emergency department, physicians currently write all release orders, including prescriptions, on a computer order entry system that is linked to the Regenstrief Medical Record System. The computerized order entry system will be programmed so that physicians randomized (randomly placed) into the intervention group, the group that will receive the intervention, they will receive one of three types of reminders: 1. The medication prescribed is generally considered unsafe for use in older patients. The reminder will then list appropriate alternatives for this medication. 2. The dose of the prescribed medication is excessive and should be adjusted for the patient's creatinine clearance (or kidney function). 3. This patient may be eligible for influenza vaccination. The physician will then choose to order or disregard the recommendation. The computer system will automatically record what the physician selected to do. The general outcome of interest is the extent to which the electronic reminders successfully improved physician practice in the emergency department setting. This outcome will be compared to physicians who were randomized to the group that did not receive the reminders (the control group).
To compare the effect of “point-of-care” (POC) analysis of blood work with traditional laboratory methods on length of stay in a pediatric emergency department (PED).
Homelessness is a significant problem in Canada, and many homeless people will seek routine care in the Emergency Department (ED) as a result of barriers to access. There is a paucity of information in the literature concerning the attitudes of health care workers towards homeless patients in the ED setting, although there is ample reason to believe that these attitudes may be suboptimal. In the absence of formal teaching regarding issues of homelessness, medical students have been shown to develop increasingly negative attitudes towards this vulnerable population. It is therefore important to better delineate the attitudes of ED physicians towards homeless persons and to develop an emergency medicine curriculum that helps sensitize physicians to the needs of this already disadvantaged population.