Recap In the post yesterday , the paramedic crew was evaluating a 38 y.o. male who had sudden, severe chest pain, as well as leg numbness and paralysis, and whose vital signs showed a mild bradycardia and pronounced hypertension. The ECG obtained by EMS appears to be junctional, with an unclear contribution from the SA […]

You are called for severe chest pain. The patient is a 38 year old male who describes the abrupt onset of a severe pain in his chest about 30 minutes before his wife called EMS. While sweat streams off his face, he tells you that he has never felt pain this intense. He isn’t sure […]

  It is a bright Sunday morning when you and your partner are dispatched for an “adult male-chest pain”. You arrive at a well kept residence, noting a ladder and paint cans as you enter. You find your patient, a 57 year old male, sitting on the sofa in mild distress. “I was doing some […]

A previously well 80-year-old experienced a fall at his home where he lives alone. He was walking from the living room to the kitchen when suddenly he found himself on the ground, which he attributes to tripping on the runner rug in the hallway. “My son has been telling me to get rid of that […]

At the risk of plagiarizing myself, I’d like to revisit a topic that I discussed on my personal blog a couple of years ago. The story goes that I am not very good with mnemonics. For me they are almost never useful in clinical practice, and as the patient gets sicker my chances of properly […]

Go back to 45 year old male with “numb hands” to read about the presentation, and see the ECGs.   The culprit artery? After arriving at the hospital, the patient bypassed the ED, going directly to the cardiac catheterization lab. The patient was found to have a total occlusion of the proximal RCA, and the […]