EMS week

This is national EMS week, which this year includes a Pediatric EMS day. Most of your local agencies will be hosting open house celebrations. This is a great time to review summer safety with your children (practicing home fire drills is always a good idea too!). Take time to thank those in your area that give their time to help provide for a safe community.

Articles

(Providers)
Acute Abdomen
Leung AKC, Sigalet D. Acute Abdominal Pain in Children. Am Fam Physician. 67:2321-6, 2003.

Congenital Heart Disease
Savitsky E, Alejos J, Votey S. Emergency department presentations of pediatric congenital heart disease. Journal of Emergency Medicine. 24 (3): 239-245, April 2003.

Croup
Bjornson CL. Johnson DW. Croup. Lancet. 371(9609):329-39, 2008 Jan 26.

Common Pediatric Fractures
Kleigman et al. Nelson Textbook of Pediatrics, 18th edition. Chapter 682 – Common Fractures. (Copied and saved as a word document and also available online from MDConsult.com)

It's Spring

(All) So Spring is here again (we're never sure it will arrive to upstate NY) and the lawnmowers were in full gear this past weekend. I couldn't help but remember some of the worst trauma cases I've seen over the years, children injured by lawnmowers and tractors. We know that approximately 9400 children (those under 18 yrs) are seen in the ED every year for mower-related injuries (AAP statistics, American Academy of Pediatrics). About one quarter of those children are less than 5 years old. Surprisingly, only 20% are due to riding mowers, the rest are from the walk-behind models!

As with most things Pediatric, prevention is the key. The AAP suggests the following:

• Children under 6 years of age should stay inside while a mower is in use.
• Children should not be allowed to ride as a passenger on a mower and they should not be permitted to play on the mower when it is in storage.
• Children should be at least 12 years old to operate a walk-behind mower and 16 years to operate a riding mower

Did you know that most riding mowers can cut while in reverse! Removal of this feature would go a long way in reducing the number of injuries. After all, do you really need to cut the grass while going backwards?

Here we go......

So what is this blog all about? My hope is that it provides information for both medical providers (especially those in training) and parents. To make life a little easier, I will mark each post indicating the best audience (Providers, Parents, All).

For the Residents using this site: Your reading list will be updated periodically. It will be listed under the title articles (not very creative, I know). Feel free to post any questions that you may have. Remember that this is a semi-public site and therefore patient information must be anonymous.

Let's get started....