Active clinical trials for "Emergencies"

The aim of this study is to prospectively validate statistical forecasting tools that have been widely used retrospectively in forecasting ED overcrowding

Treatment of patients with febrile neutropenia (FN) attending Emergency Departments (EDs) relies on rapid antibiotic initiation in order to control a presumed infection. The choice of initial antibiotics is empirical and depends on patient's prior colonization or infection by multi-drug resistant pathogens (MDRPs) and risk stratification. Stratification of high-risk patients needing broad-spectrum antibiotics is debated. Thus, for non-specialist physicians, this choice may be challenging, leading to inappropriate initial antimicrobial regimens, potential risks for the patient and higher costs. Furthermore, international guidelines recommended to develop antibiotic stewardship programs and promoted an initial strategy based on escalation or de-escalation approaches, with early reassessment depending on patients' clinical course and microbiological results. Nevertheless, this interesting strategy may increase the level of complexity for the choice of the initial antibiotic regimen by non-specialist emergency physicians who are often the first prescribers in this context. We developed an interactive computerized decision support app (CDSA) for initial antibiotic prescription and early revaluation in patients with FN. The first goal of this app is to assist non-specialized physicians in choosing initial antimicrobial regimen for patients with FN when they attend EDs. It uses an interactive algorithm based on international guidelines that takes into account patients' medical history and characteristics. Secondly, the app is also designed to propose an algorithm of antibiotic revaluation at day 3-4 for hospitalized patients, depending on patient clinical course, and biological and microbiological results. The revaluation suggests antimicrobial modification (escalation or de-escalation) or discontinuation and stopping rules with recommended duration of therapy also based on international guidelines. We hypothesize that such a CDSA may improve the adherence to guidelines for the choice of initial antibiotic regimen for FN in the ED, favour early antibiotic reassessment for hospitalized patients, both decreasing the risk of treatment failure.

An Emergency Department (ED) visit for an older adult is a high-risk medical intervention. Known adverse events (AE) include delirium, prolonged ED or hospital stay, hospitalization, recurrent ED visits and hospital death. These happen in a growing proportion in ED visitors over age 65 are over who are represented in ED visits. Tools predicting AEs in the ED are of paramount importance to help decision-making on patient triage and disposition. They can help identify areas of unmet needs for seniors in order to develop targeted actions. Multiple scoring systems including "Programme de recherche sur l'intégration des services de maintien de l'autonomie" (PRISMA-7), Identification of Seniors at Risk (ISAR), Clinical Frailty Scale (CFS), Brief Geriatric Assessment (BGA) have extensively been studied in the ED and other settings for various outcomes. These tools rely on a simple scoring system that minimally trained staff can reliably and quickly administer. Doing otherwise is unlikely to be applicable to daily clinical practice. As prediction accuracy has not significantly improved in the past decade, perhaps new analysis strategies are necessary. The current hype surrounding deep learning comes from better and cheaper hardware and the availability of simple and open-source libraries supported by large companies and a broad community of users. Hence, implementing deep learning (DL) algorithms is now open to a wide range of settings, including medical care in a standard clinical practice. DL has been shown to be more accurate than the average board-certified specialist on very specific tasks. Prediction of various clinical outcomes has produced less dramatic results, perhaps as traditional (non-DL) models already outperformed clinicians for many disease states. Published DL approaches applied to outcome prediction in the ED have focused on acutely ill adults in general, specific conditions or administrative issues such as admitting department or ED overcrowding. None have targeted a specific age group like older ED visitors. An important caveat to many DL approaches is interpretation of results. To develop interventions based on targeted features associated with AEs in a given model, it has to be somewhat transparent. If multiple layers of NNs improve prediction compared to linear regression, they often provide no clinically relevant insight on how and which variables interact to yield that result.

Background Frequent attenders (FAs) at emergency department (ED) in Singapore hospitals have been increasing over the years. More than half of the FAs are reported to be alcohol-related frequent attenders (ARFA) and they were found to be using EDs unnecessarily. We aim to assess if there will be a difference in patient outcomes in terms of ED usage and cost-effectiveness by implementing an assertive community treatment (ACT) program to manage AFRAs. Methods This is a prospective, multi-centre, before-and-after, superiority and cohort study to assess the impact of ACT from 4 study sites. 200-300 patients will be recruited and followed up for 12 months. The primary objective of the study is to investigate whether there will be a reduction in AFRA ED attendances. The secondary objective is to estimate the change in total cost utilization. Conclusion/Significance All patients who are on ACT programme will be enrolled in this study. The study intervention will be used as a new mode of care at participating hospitals. We expect to see reduced alcohol addiction level, reduced isolation level, improved motivation and better overall health. With reduced alcohol-related hospital visits, we would also expect to see improved healthcare utilization by ARFAs which will lead to increased cost savings to the healthcare systems and decreased social costs.

Overweight and obesity may be associated with difficult intravenous access leading to longer procedure time and more placement attempts of peripheral venous catheters (PVC). Dynamic ultrasound-guided short-axis needle tip navigation (DUST) may facilitate the procedure. This was a prospective, randomized, non-blinded study to compare time and placement attempts for nurse-led standard (ST) and ultrasound guided PVC placement in 90 emergency patients with a BMI ≥25kg/m2. Consenting patients were randomized at a 1:1 ratio to receive PVC by either ST or DUST. Application time was defined as the time from applying stasis to visible blood in the PVC flash-chamber. No difference in time was found (medians: ST 42 s; DUST 53.5 s, P = 0.535). There were on average 17 % less placement attempts in the DUST-group (median 1 attempt; Q1 = 1 Q3 = 1) compared to the ST-group (median 1 attempt; Q1 = 1 Q3 = 1.5), (p = 0.031). Patients reported no differences in perceived pain (p = 0.955) or perceived satisfaction (p = 0.342). Pain and subcutaneous infiltrations were the only side-effects reported (ST-group 6, DUST-group 5). DUST does not decrease time to functional PVC but reduces the number of PVC placement attempts in patients with BMI ≥25 kg/m2.

The study evaluates and compares effect of emergency surgery and colonic stents for treatment of malignant colonic obstructions.

The current COVID-19 pandemic, this is especially since the transmission of SARS-CoV-2 is thought to occur mainly through respiratory droplets generated by coughing and sneezing, by direct contact with contaminated surfaces and because in a large number of patients COVID-19 disease may be asymptomatic. As recommended by the CDC medical personnel should be equipped with full personal protective equipment (PPE) for AGP in contact with suspected/confirmed COVID-19 patient. Therefore, it is reasonable to search for the most effective methods of intravascular access in those conditions.

The study aims at clarifying whether early treatment with continuous positive airway pressure (CPAP) ventilation is able to reduce the need for intubation or death in patients visiting an emergency department (ED) with known or suspected COVID-19 infection and insufficiency respiratory.

Soluble Urokinase Plasminogen Activation Receptor (SUPAR) is a validated biomarker with applications in the study of inflammation and infection. Elevated levels of SUPAR have recently been linked to a higher mortality in patients suffering from undifferentiated sepsis, pneumonia, and more recently, COVID-19 infection. Large randomized controlled trials have been conducted on patients admitted to the emergency department (ER), regardless of the reason for admittance. These studies have stratified risk based on three cutoffs at initial measurement: Low risk : < 3 ng/mL Intermediate risk : entre 3 et 6 ng/mL High risk : > 6 ng/mL Low levels of SUPAR are associated with low risk of mortality in the short and long term in patients presenting to the ED, no matter the reason for admittance. Risk stratification could be an added decision-making tool for clinicians to comfort hospital discharge. To the best of our knowledge, there is no available data on the added value of SUPAR for predicting mortality in abdominal sepsis and abdominal pain. Abdominal pain is responsible for 10 to 30 % of ER admissions. Consequently, abdominal pain is then responsible for roughly 10 % of admissions into medical and surgical wards. Mortality varies depending on patient factors. Mortality is usually stratified on age. In patients under 50 years of age, it is near 8%, but it reaches 19 % in patients over 50. Diagnostic accuracy also decreases drastically with age, reaching approximately 30 % patients over 75. Taking this into account, integrating a measure of SUPAR levels into the current standard of care could stratify the risk of complications in patients admitted to the ER with abdominal pain.

Rapid identification of pathogens and early warning of host response are key to improve the prognosis of sepsis. Establishing a comprehensive identification system based on pathogen identification and host immune status is an effective way to achieve early warning stratification of patients with infections in the emergency department. This prospective multicenter clinical study will combine droplet digital PCR (ddPCR) and transcriptomic molecular target assay for validation in patients with suspected sepsis in the emergency department. The purpose is to (1) compare the efficacy of ddPCR with blood culture for early diagnosis and prognosis; (2) assess the diagnostic value of transcriptomic molecular targets based on 29 messenger RNA for the presence or absence of infection as well as infectious agents, and to evaluate their efficacy for prognosis; and (3) assess the diagnostic and therapeutic monitoring value of ddPCR combined with transcriptome analysis methods.