Musings form the evidence based journal club at St Emlyns
Category: Journal Club
Bayes and Belief: How pre-review belief influences critical appraisal. St Emlyn’s
I’ve been reflecting on why there is disagreement about how influential new evidence is to clinical practice in the last year or so. COVID-19 has shown that the thresholds for what we believe and when …
JC: Convalescent plasma (still) does not work in COVID-19. St Emlyn’s
The latest results on the use of convalescent plasma in Covid-19 are now out from the RECOVERY trial as a pre-print. As you know we have already covered the trial quite extensively and thus far …
JC: Real world cricothyroidotomy experience. St Emlyn’s
Cricothyroidotomy is a procedure that worried many emergency physicians. Partly because it’s a rare procedure, but also because we are likely to embarking on it at a time when things are ‘going wrong’. The most …
Colchicine does not improve mortality in COVID19. St Emlyn’s
This week the RECOVERY trial has released the first results from the Colchicine arm of the trial. We await the pre-print and the peer reviewed paper, but we are already very familiar with the trial …
JC: The NoPAC trial. TXA does not work for epistaxis. St Emlyn’s
Over the years we have had more than a passing interest in tranexamic acid. In part because we have been involved in some of the research, recruiting to trials, or acting as principal investigators, but …
Oxygen targets in critical care: The HOT-ICU trial. St Emlyn’s
Oxygen targets in critically ill/injured patients has been something we’ve talked about on the blog before. In general the evidence to date has suggested that the routine prescription of oxygen to patients is unhelpful and …
Ludwig’s Angina. St Emlyn’s
There’s two reasons why Ludwig’s angina sends a shiver down my spine but probably only one of them will apply to you. Back in 2003 when I was a third year medical student my consultant …
JC: Azithromycin in patients hospitalised with COVID-19
As we near the end of 2020, it is worth taking a moment to reflect on what a year it has been. At the beginning of the year we were first hearing about a respiratory …
The Emerging Evidence for a Genetic Susceptibility to Severe Covid-19. St Emlyn’s
A defining feature of the COVID-19 pandemic has been the wide spectrum of clinical presentations, ranging from asymptomatic viremia to life-threatening illness.1 Factors such as advancing age and co-morbid status have been shown to strongly correlate …
Risk stratification in the ED for COVID19 patients: The PRIEST study. St Emlyn’s
A core skill in emergency medicine is in the identification and classification of risk categories for the patients we see. For many conditions we have derived, validated and refined scoring systems over many years (for …