Now I get it

11. Diabetes and blood sugar Diabetes, the normal regulation of blood sugar and the things that can go wrong should all be relatively simple. Working through the disease, its signs and symptoms and the management all become fairly straight forward. […]

10. Newborn emergencies The typical pre-hospital call out is not usually for good news reasons. The caller may be grateful to see us but this will not detract from the fact that there is usually someone with pain or grief […]

9. Cardiac pacemakers The humble cardiac pacemaker has been around so long that, like heart bypass surgery, it is prone to being taken for granted. Since the first pacemaker was devised in 1958 with the intention of managing severe bradycardia […]

7. SVT and the valsalva manoeuvre Maintaining steady blood pressure within the body requires a system of sensors to monitor internal conditions and mediators to effect any necessary changes and corrections. The most dynamic of the monitors is the baroreceptors […]

4. Paediatric defibrillation If you surveyed any group of paramedics about what they felt was the most difficult and distressing case to manage it would be an easy bet that a sick child would be at the centre of it. […]

Major trauma centres are full of very eminent people who not only provide very capable medical care but also very forthright opinion. These opinions typically agree, particularly where there is good evidence from published studies. Where there is lacking evidence, […]

2. Continuous positive airway pressure Arguably the biggest innovation in managing pre-hospital acute pulmonary oedema (APO) has been the introduction of Continuous Positive Airway Pressure (CPAP). For many years this was an in hospital therapy but since the more recent […]

1. Left ventricular failure In the simplest and most basic terms there are three components of the cardiovascular system – the blood vessels, the blood inside them and the pump that drives it all around.  The pump is actually two […]