Without evidence of benefit, an intervention should not be presumed to be beneficial or safe.

- Rogue Medic

‘Perhaps the End of the Beginning’ on Harm Reduction for Americans

Yesterday, President Biden announced that he is taking three actions to reform the treatment of marijuana possession in America. These will help the federal government to get out of the way of the changes voters are making by referendum in the states to protect American citizens from the bad laws the politicians have refused to change. Voters have been repealing some of the harm their representatives have (in the name of the voters) caused to America. The president is helping those citizens.

Will pardoning simple possession of marijuana do anything to let violent criminals out of prison? No.

Will anti-American politicians claim that laws against non-violent crimes are essential to protect Americans from violence? Liars will continue to lie, but maybe voters will do a better job of rejecting the lies.

Is it reasonable to pretend that non-violent American citizens are violent, because some politicians (and some media) don’t care how many American citizens their laws hurt? No.

Currently, 37 states and the District of Columbia have legalized medical marijuana, and 19 states have legal adult-use marijuana. Five states are voting on recreational cannabis legalization in the 2022 midterms: Missouri, Arkansas, North and South Dakota, and Maryland.

Biden pardons marijuana offenses, calls for review of federal law – Politico
State-by-State Medical Marijuana Laws – ProCon.org

Americans are refusing to continue to allow their elected representatives to spend citizens’ taxes dollars to lock up their non-violent neighbors for something that is none of the business of the politicians.

Should marijuana be on the schedule of controlled substances or should marijuana just be in a more appropriate place, reflecting the lack of harm compared to alcohol and tobacco, both of which are entirely legal for adults to possess and use?

What about driving while intoxicated/impaired by marijuana? That is already illegal, as it should be.

Harm reduction has been claimed to be the goal of tough criminal laws, but the increase in overdose deaths of Americans shows that tough criminal laws cause harm, not benefit.

Supervised injection sites produce the genuine reductions in harm that criminalization does not.

Results: Seventy-five relevant articles were found. All studies converged to find that SISs [Supervised Injection Sites] were efficacious in attracting the most marginalized PWID [People Who Inject Drugs], promoting safer injection conditions, enhancing access to primary health care, and reducing the overdose frequency. SISs were not found to increase drug injecting, drug trafficking or crime in the surrounding environments. SISs were found to be associated with reduced levels of public drug injections and dropped syringes. Of the articles, 85% originated from Vancouver or Sydney.

Conclusion: SISs have largely fulfilled their initial objectives without enhancing drug use or drug trafficking. Almost all of the studies found in this review were performed in Canada or Australia, whereas the majority of SISs are located in Europe. The implementation of new SISs in places with high rates of injection drug use and associated harms appears to be supported by evidence.

Supervised injection services: what has been demonstrated? A systematic literature review – PubMed

That is from a 2014 meta-analysis of some of the research showing that supervised injection sites are urgently needed to slow down, or reverse, the rate of overdose deaths of Americans. The research since then continues to show the benefits of supervised injection sites, while the morgues continue to show the harms of criminalization the war on drugs, reminiscent of the war on alcohol.

Research makes it clear that supervised injection sites save lives, but the people opposed to supervised injection sites tend to reject evidence and reason, in favor of feelings.

Mike Tyson said he was afraid before every fight, but he didn’t let that fear stop him. We need to accept that fear and recognize that this fear is irrational. We need to stop allowing politicians to use our fear to manipulate us into harming Americans who aren’t harming anyone else.

The NPR radio show/podcast called On Point recently had a segment on supervised injection sites in New York City. While the show and site have similar names, they are not connected (OnPoint NYC). Behind supervised injection sites: A controversial solution to overdose deaths (transcript and link to podcast)

Statement from President Biden on Marijuana Reform – White House

Why ‘Perhaps the End of the Beginning’ on Harm Reduction for Americans? It is not a reference to the 1937 Seán O’Casey play, but to part of the 1942 speech given by Winston Churchill following the victory by the Allies at El Alamein. “This is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. But it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning”. That speech indicated that the violently anti-fascist Allies were now fighting an offensive war.

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Happy Friday the 13th

One of the Most Holy Days of the Church of Anecdote and Confirmation bias is here.

Will it be quiet? Oops, the utterance of the word Quiet can turns any day into a Friday the 13th for some celebrants of this religion, at least for those who work in EM/EMS (Emergency Medicine/Emergency Medical Services).

Are these superstitions unreasonable? Absolutely, but try explaining that to someone who rejects reason.

How do you reason with people who reject reason? Presenting large quantities of objective evidence is not going to matter to believers, because their self-worth depends, to some extent, on protecting themselves from being reasonable.

A coincidence is a remarkable concurrence of events or circumstances that have no apparent causal connection with one another. The perception of remarkable coincidences may lead to supernatural, occult, or paranormal claims. Or it may lead to belief in fatalism, which is a doctrine that events will happen in the exact manner of a predetermined plan.

From a statistical perspective, coincidences are inevitable and often less remarkable than they may appear intuitively. An example is the birthday problem, which shows that the probability of two persons having the same birthday already exceeds 50% in a group of only 23 persons.[1] [1]

Uncountable numbers of unrelated events happen at apparently the same time. Since time itself is relative, the point of reference of the observer can be a factor in the appearance of coincidence. For example, thunder will be heard by a person at the same time the person sees lightning, while a mile away, a person sees the lightning 5 seconds before hearing the thunder. The thunder and lightning have the same cause, but the lightning and the thunder separate by even more time, from the perspective of even more distant observers.

The lack of perspective about observations has led people to develop more superstitions about coincidences than have been documented.

Casinos depend on superstition.

You have a system? Excellent. Come and apply your system to our games of chance. We will take your bets.

Casinos will not just take just your bets. Casinos will take trillions of dollars of bets, because they have arranged the odds to be, at least, slightly in their favor.

Do you wait for someone to put all of their money into a slot machine, then take their seat, expecting that the machine is overdue to pay out?

Casinos pay millions of dollars for famous people to perform on stage to draw you in to use that kind of system. The Casino will take your bet. Your money will help to pay even more for expensive entertainers.

You count cards?

Brilliant! The dealer, or a manager, is also counting cards and trained to recognize when someone is using a betting system based on card counting. The cameras, which watch everything happening at the tables, are also helping to track your habits. The cameras will also get high quality images of you, which casinos share as part of their countermeasures. Card counting is not illegal, but the casino can do a lot to keep the odds in the favor of the casino.

Roulette games have systems, as well. Likewise, the casinos want you to bet your money on your systems. They have bills to pay and your money is just a drop in the bucket to the casinos.

You don’t believe in coincidences?

Companies make trillions of dollars off of your belief. Your belief is their business and their business is profitable.

However, if you want to get better at recognizing the biases you have, challenge yourself to bets on the outcomes of your beliefs. It doesn’t have to be money. You can bet doing something you don’t want to do against doing something you do want to do, based on whether you are right about something you believe.

Write down what you believe/believe will happen. Write down your criteria for winning/losing. Don’t make excuses for fudging the criteria. Maybe doing something that you should do, but really don’t want to do. Think of how much you will accomplish – if you are honest with yourself and you set your bets up objectively.

Footnotes:

[1] Coincidence
Wikipedia
Web page

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Happy Full Moon Friday the 13th


Technically, the full moon is not until 00:33 – 33 minutes after the end of Friday the 13th, so that may help the superstitious to feel better, since these superstition events are not actually coinciding – pitting twice as many Gods against the superstitious (a double whammy). Or the superstitious may feel worse, because they now have two days in a row of the Gods conspiring against them. The reality is that only their own beliefs conspire against them. it is all in the heads of the believers.

Even when someone does claim to come up with some evidence to support their beliefs, those conclusions are not supported by higher quality research.
 

In conclusion, Friday the 13th appears to be dangerous for some women. Since Friday falls on the 13th day of the month only twice a year on average, prospects for significant public health gains are limited. However, the risk of death for women who venture into traffic on this unlucky day is higher by 63%, and it should be possible to prevent one-third of the deaths occurring on this particular day. Even then, the absolute gain would remain marginal, since only one death per 5 million person-days could be prevented.[1]

 

The total number of deaths is small. Drawing that conclusion, based on a small sample size is a problem. In order to be able to come up with larger numbers, to minimize the effects of the small sample size, other researchers looked at the motor vehicle collisions, rather than just fatal motor vehicle collisions. The assumption that the cause of the fatalities was anxiety, produced by superstition among the drivers is projecting a lot onto the drivers – without any evidence to support this supposed cause.

It should not be a surprise that the results of a much larger sample size contradicts the assumptions based on the much smaller sample.
 

Conclusion:
We conclude that, in the Finnish traffic accident statistics for 1989–2002, females have not incurred more injury (or fatal) road traffic accidents on Fridays the 13th than expected, as a driver, bicyclist or pedestrian. We suggest that Näyhä’s contradicting result on fatalities is due to different sampling, non-optimal setting and chance in a fairly small data. However, this does not imply a nonexistent effect on accident risk as no exposure-to-risk data [18] are available. People who are anxious of “Black Friday” may stay home, or at least avoid driving a car. The only relevant data [4], suggesting a small decrease in highway traffic, is rather limited and should be confirmed with more extensive research.[2]

 

The law of small numbers is an attempt to expose the mistake of extrapolating from small numbers as if the small numbers are representative. Small numbers are misleading. Small numbers are often used to promote ideas that are not supported by adequate numbers – such as the claims that epinephrine improves cardiac arrest outcomes that matter, or that amiodarone improves cardiac arrest outcomes that matter.[3]

Footnotes:

[1] Traffic deaths and superstition on Friday the 13th.
Näyhä S.
Am J Psychiatry. 2002 Dec;159(12):2110-1.
PMID: 12450968

[2] Females do not have more injury road accidents on Friday the 13th.
Radun I, Summala H.
BMC Public Health. 2004 Nov 16;4:54.
PMID: 15546493

Free Full Text from PubMed Central.

[3] Chapter 10
The Law of Small Numbers

Thinking, Fast and Slow
Daniel Kahneman
2011
Wikipedia page

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Association of ventilation with outcomes from out-of-hospital cardiac arrest

 

Does this study compare chest compressions with pauses for ventilation (regular CPR [CardioPulmonary Resuscitation]) against continuous chest compressions with no ventilations (compression-only CPR)?

Absolutely not.

This only compares compressions with pauses for good ventialtions against compressions with pauses for bad ventilations.

Will this be used to justify including ventilations in CPR, in spite of the absence of any valid evidence that ventilations improve outcomes?

Yes. It already has in the editorial about the study, published in the same issue.[1]

The authors of the paper were clear about the actual comparison in the discussion.
 

Why did so few patients in our study receive ventilation during CPR? Ventilation with a BVM device is a difficult skill to perform properly and must be practiced to maintain proficiency.22 The person performing ventilation must extend the neck, or place an oral airway, and/or perform a jaw thrust maneuver in order to maintain an open airway, a tight mask seal on the face must be maintained to prevent air from leaking around the mask, and the rescuer must then simultaneously squeeze the manual ventilator over 1 to 1.5 s. Our study showed no significant difference in the number of pauses between Group 1 and Group 2 patients (11 vs. 12 pauses). However, Group 2 patients received significantly more ventilations than Group 1 patients (8 vs. 3 ventilations). The study suggests that the rescuers in both Groups attempted ventilation about the same number of times per patient, but these attempts frequently did not result in lung inflation in Group 1 patients.[2]

 

In other words, this is a study of 30 compressions with a pause for 2 adequate ventilations to 30 compressions with a pause for 2 inadequate ventilations. This is important to know, but it has nothing to do with compression-only resuscitation.
 


 

Were the ventilations in the bad ventilation group going into the stomach? There are not a lot of possibilities, but not much of the ventilations were not going into the lungs or the ventilations were very shallow.

The authors do not mention if there is any difference in the rate of vomiting, aspiration, or other side effects expected from bad ventilation, between the groups.

The authors appear to be measuring the quality of ventilation, which is has never been shown to improve outcomes over compression-only resuscitation.

There is research showing that ventilations do not improve outcomes:
 

Cardiocerebral resuscitation improves survival of patients with out-of-hospital cardiac arrest.
Kellum MJ, Kennedy KW, Ewy GA.
Am J Med. 2006 Apr;119(4):335-40.
PMID: 16564776 [PubMed – indexed for MEDLINE]

Cardiocerebral resuscitation improves neurologically intact survival of patients with out-of-hospital cardiac arrest.
Kellum MJ, Kennedy KW, Barney R, Keilhauer FA, Bellino M, Zuercher M, Ewy GA.
Ann Emerg Med. 2008 Sep;52(3):244-52. Epub 2008 Mar 28.
PMID: 18374452 [PubMed – indexed for MEDLINE]

Minimally interrupted cardiac resuscitation by emergency medical services for out-of-hospital cardiac arrest.
Bobrow BJ, Clark LL, Ewy GA, Chikani V, Sanders AB, Berg RA, Richman PB, Kern KB.
JAMA. 2008 Mar 12;299(10):1158-65.
PMID: 18334691 [PubMed – indexed for MEDLINE]

Free Full Text at JAMA

Passive oxygen insufflation is superior to bag-valve-mask ventilation for witnessed ventricular fibrillation out-of-hospital cardiac arrest.
Bobrow BJ, Ewy GA, Clark L, Chikani V, Berg RA, Sanders AB, Vadeboncoeur TF, Hilwig RW, Kern KB.
Ann Emerg Med. 2009 Nov;54(5):656-662.e1. Epub 2009 Aug 6.
PMID: 19660833 [PubMed – indexed for MEDLINE]

And more.

 

 

Footnotes:

[1] Ventilation during cardiopulmonary resuscitation-Only mostly dead!
Mosesso VN Jr.
Resuscitation. 2019 Aug;141:200-201. doi: 10.1016/j.resuscitation.2019.06.274. Epub 2019 Jun 22. No abstract available.
PMID: 31238035

 

[2] Association of ventilation with outcomes from out-of-hospital cardiac arrest.
Chang MP, Lu Y, Leroux B, Aramendi Ecenarro E, Owens P, Wang HE, Idris AH.
Resuscitation. 2019 Aug;141:174-181. doi: 10.1016/j.resuscitation.2019.05.006. Epub 2019 May 18.
PMID: 31112744

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The Big Government, Big Religion, Immoral Opposition to Physician Assisted Suicide

 
 

The government should not force people to die painful deaths, in order to please the people who can only think of the ways something can go wrong and/or the Bible thumpers. These patients are not harming anyone else and we should stop condemning them as if they are the ones rejecting morality.

There are ways to protect vulnerable patients from being taken advantage of by family, or by others, without forcing everyone to die painfully. Physician assisted suicide is a way to protect vulnerable patients from being taken advantage of by those who claim to know what is best for everyone and want to force it on everyone, for their own good.

The alternative to physician assisted suicide is to require moral physicians break the law in order to provide the care the patient needs – relief of suffering that cannot otherwise be relieved. Physician assisted suicide should not be opposed by any ethical medical organization.

The older I get, the more I see patients abused by this hypocritical legal prohibition on ethical behavior.

Providing the care that the patient requests, with fully informed consent by the patient, is far more ethical than claiming that other people should control patients’ lives for the patients.

This does not affect me much, as a patient, because I can acquire whatever I need to end my life, whenever I feel it is the best option. I also have the ability to administer whatever medications I might choose to use, but I would probably have to do this sooner than I would like, in order to avoid having to rely on others to do what is right.

I will not ask anyone else to put themselves at legal risk, in order to allow me more time.

I will do whatever I need to do before I lose the ability to do everything on my own. Obviously, this will not apply to many medical conditions that have catastrophic sudden onset. I am not currently experiencing any symptoms and I do not have any diagnosis of any condition that would encourage me to end my life, but I may need to move to a state that does not require patients to be tortured to death, if that changes. If the SCOTUS literalists/originalists imposes a big government sharia decision to prohibit ethical end of life decisions by patients, then I might need to move to another country in order to have a longer life.

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Protecting Systemic Incompetence – Part I

We demand the lowest standards, because we are willfully ignorant and we do not want to understand. The surprise is that so many of us survive our devotion to incompetence. The loudest voices tend to dominate the discussions and the loudest voices demand that their excuses for incompetence be accepted. The rest of us don’t oppose incompetence enough.

A nurse was told to give 2 mg Versed (the most common brand of midazolam in the US) for sedation for a scan, intended to give 1 mg Versed, but actually gave an unknown quantity of vecuronium (Norcuron is the most common brand in the US). The patient was observed to be unresponsive and pulseless by the techs in the scan. A code was called. The family learned the details from a newspaper article, not from the hospital.

A Tennessee nurse charged with reckless homicide after a medication error killed a patient pleaded not guilty on Wednesday in a Nashville courtroom packed with other nurses who came in scrubs to show their support.[1]

The nurse intended to give a medication that should be limited to patients who are monitored (ECG and waveform capnography), because different patients will respond in different ways. This is basic drug administration and deviation from that basic competence may even have been common in this Neuro ICU (Neurological Intensive Care Unit). We demand low standards, because we do not want to understand.

We don’t need to monitor for that, because that almost never happens.

Except these easily preventable errors do happen. And we lie about it. We help to cover it up, because we demand low standards, regardless of how many patients have to suffer for the benefit of our incompetence.

This is a common argument used by doctors, nurses, paramedics, . . . . It makes no sense, but we keep demonstrating that we don’t care.

The people in charge should act responsibly, but they delegate responsibility and we reward them.

Back to the hospital, Vanderbilt University Medical Center (VUMC) is a university medical center, so the standards should be high. VUMC was founded in 1874 and is ranked as one of the best hospitals in America.

There is a drug dispensing machine, from which less-than-skilled nurses can obtain almost anything and administer almost anything, without understanding enough to recognize the problem. This is an administrative problem. This was designed by someone with no understanding of risk management.

The over-ride of the selection is not the problem, because emergencies happen and it is sometimes necessary to bypass normal procedures during an emergency. Ambulances are equipped with lights, sirens, and permission to violate certain traffic rules for this reason.

Some of the many blatant problems are:

* The failure of the nurse to have any understanding of the medication supposed to be given

* The failure of the nurse to recognize that the drug being given was not the drug ordered.

* The failure of the nurse to monitor the patient being given a drug for sedation.

* Most of all, the failure of the hospital – the nurses, the doctors, the administrators, to try to make sure that at least these minimum standards are in place.

* How often do nurses in the Neuro ICU give midazolam?

* Why is a nurse, who is clearly not familiar with midazolam, giving midazolam to any patient?

* How is a nurse, working unsupervised in a Neuro ICU not familiar with midazolam?

* What kind of qualifications are required for a nurse to give sedation without supervision?

* Since this nurse was orienting another nurse, what qualifies this nurse to orient anyone?

* Given the side effects of midazolam, why was midazolam ordered without monitoring?

* Given the side effects of midazolam, was it the most appropriate sedative for use in a setting where monitoring is going to be difficult?

* Was it the more rapid onset of sedation, in order to free up the PET scan more quickly and/or avoid having to reschedule the scan, that led to the choice of midazolam?

* How well do any of the doctors understand the pharmacology of midazolam if they are giving orders for a nurse to grab a dose, take it down to the scan, give the drug, and return to the unit, abandoning the monitoring of the patient to the techs in the PET scan?

* This is not a criticism of the techs in PET scan, but are techs authorized to manage sedated patients?

* Even though they will often scan sedated patients, are the techs required to demonstrate any competence at managing sedated patients?
The nurses being oriented apparently thought that it is customary to give sedation:

1. without even looking at the name of the medication

2. without confirming by looking at the name again, it before administration

3. without double checking with a nurse, or tech, that the label matches the name of the drug to be given
How many of the doctors, responsible for the care of ICU patients, would agree to be sedated, without being monitored, and to have their care handed off to PET scan technicians?

Why didn’t the doctors and nurses see this as a problem before it made the news?

If the problems were reported, nothing appears to have been done to address the problems beyond the usual – Nothing to see here. Move along. or That’s above your pay grade.

That is the primary point I am trying to make.

The problem is well above the pay grade of the nurse.
Here is the part that experienced nurses have jumped on immediately:

Why did the nurse think that midazolam needs to be reconstituted?

Vecuronium (most common brand name is Norcuron) is a non-depolarizing neuromuscular-blocker, which comes as a powder, that needs to be reconstituted.

Image source
1. Read label instructions?

This nurse has repeatedly demonstrated a need to be supervised, but those responsible for that supervision have apparently ignored their responsibilities in a way that far exceeds any failures by this nurse.

Is it possible that this is a one time event and that the nurse has behaved in an exemplary manner at all times while around doctors and other nurses before this day? It is possible, but the number and severity of the failures on the part of the nurse strongly suggest a pattern of not understanding, not caring, or both. I suspect that any lack of caring is due to a lack of understanding, because I have not yet lost all hope in humanity.

Footnotes:

[1] Nurse charged in fatal drug-swap error pleads not guilty
By Travis Loller
February 20, 2019
Associated Press
Article

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Edited 3/24/2022 at 00:34 to correct spelling from less-than-killed to less-than-skilled and poweder top powder.

Are We Killing Patients With Parochialism?

 
The variation in approaches to resuscitation in EMS is tremendous.

Many excuses center around the need for local people to be able to claim that they know something that the evidence does not show, although they consistently fail to provide valid evidence for these claims. This local knowledge appears to be intuitive – they just know it, but cannot provide anything to support their feelings.

The latest research can be interpreted in many different ways, but it definitely does not support the claims of the advocates of parochialism.
 

Results We identified 43 656 patients with OHCA treated by 112 EMS agencies. At EMS agency level, we observed large variations in survival to hospital discharge (range, 0%-28.9%; unadjusted MOR, 1.43 [95% CI, 1.34-1.54]), return of spontaneous circulation on emergency department arrival (range, 9.0%-57.1%; unadjusted MOR, 1.53 [95% CI, 1.43-1.65]), and favorable functional outcome (range, 0%-20.4%; unadjusted MOR, 1.54 [95% CI, 1.40-1.73]).[1]

 

MOR = Median Odds Ratio – how many times more likely is something to happen.

What is most commonly measured is what matters the least – ROSC (Return Of Spontaneous Circulation). Did we get a pulse back, for even the briefest period of time, regardless of outcomes that matter.

What matters? Does the person wake up and have the ability to function as they did before the cardiac arrest.

Those who justify focusing on ROSC claim that, If we don’t get a pulse back, nothing else matters, but that is the kind of excuse used by frauds. How we get a pulse back does matter. The evidence makes that conclusion irrefutable, but there will always be those who do not accept that they are causing harm. They will make excuses for the harm they are causing. Getting ROSC helps them to feel that they are not causing harm. ROSC encourages us to give drugs like epinephrine, which have been demonstrated to not improve any survival that matters.

The means of obtaining ROSC can be compared to the means of doing anything that requires finesse. Sure, it feels good to try to force something. Sure, you can claim that forcing something is the most direct way to accomplish the goal.

Can the advocates of focusing on ROSC produce any valid evidence that their approach leads to improvements in outcomes that matter? No. The evidence contradicts their claims. The evidence has caused us to eliminate many of their treatments – treatments they claimed had to work because of physiology. As it turns out, they were wrong. They were wrong about their treatments and wrong about their understanding of physiology.

If you want to win money, bet that any new treatment will not improve outcomes that matter.
 

This variation persisted despite adjustment for patient-level and EMS agency–level factors known to be associated with outcomes (adjusted MOR for survival 1.56 [95% CI 1.44-1.73]; adjusted MOR for return of spontaneous circulation at emergency department arrival, 1.50 [95% CI, 1.41-1.62]; adjusted MOR for functionally favorable survival, 1.53 [95% CI, 1.37-1.78]).[1]

 

Is presence of a pulse upon arrival at the emergency department an important outcome? Only for billing purposes. The presence of a pulse justifies providing more, and more expensive, treatments. Is the presence of a pulse upon arrival at the emergency department a goal worth trying for? As with ROSC, only if it does not cause us to harm patients to obtain this goal, which is just something that is documented, because it is a point of transfer of patient care.
 

After restricting analysis to those who survived more than 60 minutes after hospital arrival and including hospital treatment characteristics, the variation persisted (adjusted MOR for survival, 1.49 [95% CI, 1.36-1.69]; adjusted MOR for functionally favorable survival, 1.34 [95% CI, 1.20-1.59]).[1]

 

There is a lot of variability.

What did they find?
 


 

Most of the people in EMS, who claim to be doing what is best for their patients, are making things worse.
 

69% means that there are two EMS agencies producing bad outcomes for every EMS agency producing good outcomes.

Correction – The text crossed out is not accurate. I should have thought that through a bit better before I posted it. My caption for Table 1 is accurate. However, what I should have written afterward is –

The worse half of EMS agencies are only producing half as many good outcomes as the better half of EMS agencies.

We are bad at resuscitation and those doing the most resuscitating are doing the least good.

Why do so many of us refuse to improve our standards?

What is more important than the outcomes for our patients?
 

Why are we so overwhelmingly bad at resuscitation?
 

What are the authors’ conclusions?
 

This study has implications for improvement of OHCA management. First, the analysis indicates that the highest-performing EMS agencies had more layperson interventions and more EMS personnel on scene.[1]

 

They do not conclude that we need more doctors, more nurses, or more paramedics responding to cardiac arrest.
 

Second, our findings justify further efforts to identify potentially modifiable factors that may explain this residual variation in outcomes and could be targets of public health interventions.[1]

 

We need to figure out what we are doing, because the people telling us that they know that we need intubation are lying.

We need to figure out what we are doing, because the people telling us that they know that we need epinephrine are lying.

We need to figure out what we are doing, because the people telling us that they know that we need amiodarone are lying.

We need to figure out what we are doing, because the people telling us that they know that we need ________ are lying.

How dare I call them liars?

Let them produce valid evidence that the interventions they claim are necessary actually do improve outcomes that matter.

Have them stop making excuses and start producing results.

I dare them.

The only time we have made significant improvements in outcomes have been when we emphasized chest compressions, especially bystander chest compressions, and when we emphasized bystander defibrillation.

It is time to start requiring evidence of benefit for everything we do to patients.

Our patients are too important to be subjected to witchcraft, based on opinions and an absence of research.

There is plenty of valid evidence that using only chest compressions improves outcomes.
 

Cardiocerebral resuscitation improves survival of patients with out-of-hospital cardiac arrest.
Kellum MJ, Kennedy KW, Ewy GA.
Am J Med. 2006 Apr;119(4):335-40.
PMID: 16564776 [PubMed – indexed for MEDLINE]

Cardiocerebral resuscitation improves neurologically intact survival of patients with out-of-hospital cardiac arrest.
Kellum MJ, Kennedy KW, Barney R, Keilhauer FA, Bellino M, Zuercher M, Ewy GA.
Ann Emerg Med. 2008 Sep;52(3):244-52. Epub 2008 Mar 28.
PMID: 18374452 [PubMed – indexed for MEDLINE]

Minimally interrupted cardiac resuscitation by emergency medical services for out-of-hospital cardiac arrest.
Bobrow BJ, Clark LL, Ewy GA, Chikani V, Sanders AB, Berg RA, Richman PB, Kern KB.
JAMA. 2008 Mar 12;299(10):1158-65.
PMID: 18334691 [PubMed – indexed for MEDLINE]

Free Full Text at JAMA

Passive oxygen insufflation is superior to bag-valve-mask ventilation for witnessed ventricular fibrillation out-of-hospital cardiac arrest.
Bobrow BJ, Ewy GA, Clark L, Chikani V, Berg RA, Sanders AB, Vadeboncoeur TF, Hilwig RW, Kern KB.
Ann Emerg Med. 2009 Nov;54(5):656-662.e1. Epub 2009 Aug 6.
PMID: 19660833 [PubMed – indexed for MEDLINE]

And more.

 

It is not ethical to insist on giving treatments to patients in the absence of valid evidence of benefit to the patient. We need to begin to improve our ethics.
 

Also to be posted on ResearchBlogging.org when they relaunch the site.

Footnotes:

[1] Variation in Survival After Out-of-Hospital Cardiac Arrest Between Emergency Medical Services Agencies.
Okubo M, Schmicker RH, Wallace DJ, Idris AH, Nichol G, Austin MA, Grunau B, Wittwer LK, Richmond N, Morrison LJ, Kurz MC, Cheskes S, Kudenchuk PJ, Zive DM, Aufderheide TP, Wang HE, Herren H, Vaillancourt C, Davis DP, Vilke GM, Scheuermeyer FX, Weisfeldt ML, Elmer J, Colella R, Callaway CW; Resuscitation Outcomes Consortium Investigators.
JAMA Cardiol. 2018 Sep 26. doi: 10.1001/jamacardio.2018.3037. [Epub ahead of print]
PMID: 30267053

Free Full Text from JAMA Cardiology

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A Randomized Trial of Epinephrine in Out-of-Hospital Cardiac Arrest – Part I

 
Also to be posted on ResearchBlogging.org when they relaunch the site.

The results are in from the only completed Adrenaline (Epinephrine in non-Commonwealth countries) vs. Placebo for Cardiac Arrest study.
 


 

Even I overestimated the possibility of benefit of epinephrine.

I had hoped that there would be some evidence to help identify patients who might benefit from epinephrine, but that is not the case.

PARAMEDIC2 (Prehospital Assessment of the Role of Adrenaline: Measuring the Effectiveness of Drug Administration in Cardiac Arrest) compared adrenaline (epinephrine) with placebo in a “randomized, double-blind trial involving 8014 patients with out-of-hospital cardiac arrest”.

More people survived for at least 30 days with epinephrine, which is entirely expected. There has not been any controversy about whether giving epinephrine produces pulses more often than not giving epinephrine. As with amiodarone (Nexterone and Pacerone), the question has been whether we are just filling the ICUs and nursing home beds with comatose patients.
 

There was no statistical evidence of a modification in treatment effect by such factors as the patient’s age, whether the cardiac arrest was witnessed, whether CPR was performed by a bystander, initial cardiac rhythm, or response time or time to trial-agent administration (Fig. S7 in the Supplementary Appendix). [1]

 

The secondary outcome is what everyone has been much more interested in – what are the neurological outcomes with adrenaline vs. without adrenaline?

The best outcome was no detectable neurological impairment.
 

the benefits of epinephrine that were identified in our trial are small, since they would result in 1 extra survivor for every 112 patients treated. This number is less than the minimal clinically important difference that has been defined in previous studies.29,30 Among the survivors, almost twice the number in the epinephrine group as in the placebo group had severe neurologic impairment.

Our work with patients and the public before starting the trial (as summarized in the Supplementary Appendix) identified survival with a favorable neurologic outcome to be a higher priority than survival alone. [1]

 


Click on the image to make it larger.
 

Are there some patients who will do better with epinephrine than without?

Maybe (I would have written probably, before these results), but we still do not know how to identify those patients.

Is titrating tiny amounts of epinephrine, to observe for response, reasonable? What response would we be looking for? Wat do we do if we observe that response? We have been using epinephrine for over half a century and we still don’t know when to use it, how much to use, or how to identify the patients who might benefit.

I will write more about these results later

We now have evidence that, as with amiodarone, we should only be using epinephrine as part of well controlled trials.

Also see –

How Bad is Epinephrine (Adrenaline) for Cardiac Arrest, According to the PARAMEDIC2 Study?

Footnotes:

[1] A Randomized Trial of Epinephrine in Out-of-Hospital Cardiac Arrest.
Perkins GD, Ji C, Deakin CD, Quinn T, Nolan JP, Scomparin C, Regan S, Long J, Slowther A, Pocock H, Black JJM, Moore F, Fothergill RT, Rees N, O’Shea L, Docherty M, Gunson I, Han K, Charlton K, Finn J, Petrou S, Stallard N, Gates S, Lall R; PARAMEDIC2 Collaborators.
N Engl J Med. 2018 Jul 18. doi: 10.1056/NEJMoa1806842. [Epub ahead of print]
PMID: 30021076

Free Full Text from NEJM

All supplementary material is also available at the end of the article at the NEJM site in PDF format –

Protocol

Supplementary Appendix

Disclosure Forms

There is also an editorial, which I have not yet read, by Clifton W. Callaway, M.D., Ph.D., and Michael W. Donnino, M.D. –

Testing Epinephrine for Out-of-Hospital Cardiac Arrest.
Callaway CW, Donnino MW.
N Engl J Med. 2018 Jul 18. doi: 10.1056/NEJMe1808255. [Epub ahead of print] No abstract available.
PMID: 30021078

Free Full Text from NEJM

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