Over the past week, this article, which was published online ahead of print in JAMA Pediatrics (1), has made its rounds through the Twitter-verse: The investigators of this study aimed to assess the readiness of emergency departments across the United States in the provision of care to pediatric patients. This was based on the joint policy statement put forth by the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) related to guidelines for the care of children in [...]

If you ask 5 cardiologists and 5 toxicologists about the best way to predict the risk of Torsade de Pointes (TdP) in a patient with a prolonged QT, you will likely get 11 different answers. Here is what we know: A corrected QT (QTc) interval > 500 msec is associated with an increased risk of TdP (1). Not every patient with a QTc interval > 500 msec develops TdP (1). Not every patient with TdP has a QTc > [...]

A middle-aged male with no known history of hereditary angioedema (HAE) and a questionable medication history presents to your ED with oropharyngeal angioedema. He has received the usual cocktail of intramuscular epinephrine along with an intravenous antihistamine, H2-receptor antagonist, and corticosteroid with no improvement in symptoms. The EM resident asks you for the correct dose of C1-esterase inhibitor (C1-INH). Oh, and it is needed STAT because the decision has been made to perform rapid sequence [...]