Department Blog

The February issue of Emergency Medicine Clinics of North America, on the topic of respiratory emergencies, contains articles written by two EM faculty members. Michael Winters, MD, with co-author Michael Allison, MD (a 2015 graduate of our 6-year EM/IM/CCM residency and now a critcal care attending at St. Agnes Hospital), contributed the article titled “Noninvasive Ventilation for the Emergency Physician.” Haney Mallemat, MD, co-authored the article titled “Emergency Department Treatment of the Mechanically Ventilated Patient.” Amal Mattu, MD, Consulting Editor for the Clinics series, provided the foreword for this issue.

Drs. Jon Mark Hirshon and Doug Floccare have updated their Cochrane review, “Helicopter Emergency Medical Services for Adults with Major Trauma.” Their new work was published in the Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews on December 15, 2015, with co-authors Drs. Samuel Galvagno, Robert Sikorski, and Christopher Stephens from the Department of Anesthesiology; Ms. Deirdre Beecher, London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine, Cochrane Injuries Group; and Dr. Stephen Thomas, Hamad General Hospital & Weill Cornell Medical College, Doha, Qatar.

Ashley Strobel, MD, Vikramjit Gill, MD, and Michael Witting, MD, MS, collaborated with Getachew Teshome, MD, MPH, from the Department of Pediatrics, on the study that led to their article published in the American Journal of Emergency Medicine: “Emergency Diagnostic Testing for Pediatric Nonfebrile Seizures” (33:1261-1264, 2015).

Darlene Robinson, MD, MPH, is the author of the case report titled “Adrenal Mass Causing Secondary Hypertension,” published in the November issue of The Journal of Emergency Medicine. The manuscript was accepted outright (no revisions requested) by the journal’s editor in June.

Ben Lawner, DO, MS, EMT-P, delivered the keynote address (“Critical Care in the Air - and Everywhere!”) at this year’s Eastern Shore Emergency and Critical Care Symposium, held at Chesapeake College in Wye Mills, Maryland, on November 12. This annual conference is sponsored by Maryland ExpressCare, the regional communications and critical care transport system, and attended by critical care transport and hospital-based professionals from the University of Maryland Medical System network. Among the many University of Maryland faculty members who presented lectures at this evening were Walter Atha, MD, Regional Director, Eastern Shore Emergency Medicine, and Thomas Chiccone, MD, an emergency physician at the Memorial Hospital at Easton.

Amal Mattu, MD, presented the keynote address, “Managing Cardiac Arrest: 2015 and Beyond,” at the Scientific Conference sponsored by the Emirates Society of Emergency Medicine, held in Abu Dhabi in early December. During the conference, he presented lectures titled “Myocardial Infarction in the Presence of Left Bundle Branch Block” and “CT Angiography for the Diagnosis of Acute Coronary Syndromes.” In addition, he led an 8-hour preconference Advanced ECG Workshop that covered cardiac ischemia, ischemia mimics/confounders, and dysrhythmias.

Ben Lawner, DO, MS, EMT-P, presented a lecture titled "Where We Are with RSI: Through the Glottic Opening" at the 36th Annual Virginia EMS Symposium, held in Norfolk in mid-November. This conference brings together more than 1500 EMS providers from across the state to earn continuing education credits and review recent advances in prehospital care.

Michael Abraham, MD, MS, is the lead author of the article titled “Special Considerations in Trauma Patients,” published in the November issue of Emergency Medicine Clinics of North America. The topic for this Clinics issue is behavioral and psychiatric emergencies. Mike’s co-authors are Patrick Aquino, MD, a psychiatrist at Lahey Medical Center in Burlington, Massachusetts, and Dick Kuo, MD, formerly on our emergency medicine faculty and now a member of the medicine/emergency medicine faculty at Baylor College of Medicine. Amal Mattu, MD, continues in the role of consulting editor for the Clinics series.

Drs. Tareq Al-Salamah, Haney Mallemat, Michael Witting, Mike Winters, and Bryan Hayes, in collaboration with Drs. Michelle Hines and Emily L. Heil from the School of Pharmacy and Dr. J. Kristie Johnson from the Department of Pathology, published an article in the December issue of the Journal of Emergency Medicine, titled “Resistance Patterns of Escherichia coli in Women with Uncomplicated Urinary Tract Infection Do Not Correlate with Institutional Antibiogram.” Based on culture results from otherwise healthy women with uncomplicated urinary tract infections treated in UMMC’s emergency department, the authors suspect that hospital antibiograms overestimate E. coli resistance rates for several antibiotics. The abstract is available at www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26281821.

Joseph Martinez, MD, Sarah Sommerkamp, MD, RDMS, and Brian Euerle, MD, RDMS, are the authors of the article titled “How We Started an Elective in Emergency Bedside Ultrasound,” published in the December issue of Medical Teacher (37:1063-1066, 2015).