Emergency Procedures Clinical Guide

Emergency medicine and critical care

32 articles

In this Emergency Procedures Clinical Guide we cover how to perform several advanced procedures in emergency medicine. These procedures will help you diagnose and treat both common and rare conditions you’ll see in acute care medicine. We cover procedures related to joint infections, dislocations, many types of abscesses, and priapism. And of course, by the end, we also review how to perform the ultimate rescue airway procedure, the cricothyrotomy. We summarize the tools you need, how they’re used, and important pearls and neat tricks to make things easier.

Siamak Moayedi, MD

AUTHOR

Editors:Shelley Jacobs, PhD

Peer reviewers:Franz Wiesbauer, MD MPH Internist

Last update22nd Jan 2021

Chapter 1

All you need to know about arthrocentesis

Patients often present to the emergency department and outpatient practices complaining of painful and swollen joints. In the articles of this chapter, we review the indications and contraindications for performing an arthrocentesis. We summarize the tools required and describe the best techniques for successfully performing this procedure on the wrist, elbow, shoulder, knee, and ankle joints.

Chapter 2

The essential information about performing an anterior shoulder reduction

The shoulder is the most commonly dislocated joint in the body. The next time you’re watching a sporting event, you may have the opportunity to be a hero and make the diagnosis and reduce a dislocated joint without the need for sedation right there on the field. In these articles we review several ways of reducing a dislocated shoulder without needing sedation. After reading the articles in this chapter, you’ll even know how to reduce your own dislocated shoulder!

Chapter 3

What you need to know to reduce a jaw, prosthetic hip, and elbow

What does a toddler who won’t move her elbow, a teenager who won’t close his mouth, and an elderly person who can’t move her hip have in common? You’ll know once you’ve read the articles in this chapter. In these articles we review how to diagnose and treat nursemaid’s elbow, and jaw and prosthetic hip dislocations.

Chapter 4

All you need to know about abscess drainage

If you work in an urgent care setting, you see a lot of soft tissue abscesses. In this chapter, we cover how to diagnose and treat a variety of abscesses, from basic soft tissue infections and paronychia, to more complicated peritonsillar and Bartholin gland abscesses. We review traditional incision and drainage techniques, and then introduce newer techniques like the loop drainage method.

Chapter 5

The essential guide to diagnosing and treating priapism

Did you know that there are two types of priapism? Did you know that one of them is a time sensitive emergency and your patient can’t afford to wait an hour for the urologist to show up? In the articles of this chapter we summarize the tools needed and review how to dilute phenylephrine for the management of priapism. After reading the articles in this chapter, you’ll be able to rapidly treat this emergency.

Chapter 6

What you need to know to successfully perform a cricothyrotomy

Your patient is dying and you can’t intubate them. Now you can’t even oxygenate or ventilate them. In the articles in this chapter we review the indications, tools, and techniques to save your patient’s life. These articles summarize the essentials about the most important emergency airway rescue procedure—the cricothyrotomy.