Tag Archive for: emergency department

pill bottles and pills

White children more likely to receive unnecessary antibiotics in ED

Although antibiotics can turn the tide for a variety of illnesses, they are ineffective against those caused by viruses. Despite this well-known fact, doctors often prescribe antibiotics for viral illnesses.

Infections now considered relatively easy to treat, including some forms of diarrhea and pneumonia, were the leading cause of death throughout the developed world until the 20th century. Then, scientists developed what eventually turned into a miracle cure: Antibiotics that could kill or thwart the growth of a broad array of bacterial species.

Although antibiotics can turn the tide for a variety of illnesses, they are ineffective against those caused by viruses. Despite this well-known fact, doctors often prescribe antibiotics for viral illnesses. Taking these drugs unnecessarily can fuel antibiotic resistance, giving rise to bacteria that don’t respond to the drugs that kept them in check in the past.

A new multicenter study shows how prevalent this scenario can be in hospitals’ Emergency Departments. This research, led by Monika K. Goyal, M.D., M.S.C.E., director of research in the Division of Emergency Medicine at Children’s National Health System, shows that non-Latino white children seeking treatment for viral infections in the Emergency Department (ED) are about twice as likely to receive an antibiotic unnecessarily compared with non-Latino black children or Latino children.

These findings, published online Sept. 5, 2017 in Pediatrics, echo similar racial and ethnic differences in treating acute respiratory tract infections in the primary care setting.

“It is encouraging that just 2.6 percent of children treated in pediatric EDs across the nation received antibiotics for viral acute respiratory tract infections since antibiotics are ineffective in treating viral infections,” Dr. Goyal says. “However, it is troubling to see such persistent racial and ethnic differences in how medications are prescribed, in this case in the ED. In addition to providing the best evidence-based care, we also strive to provide equitable care to all patients.”

Acute respiratory tract infections are among the most common reasons children are rushed to the ED for treatment, Dr. Goyal and co-authors write. Overprescribing antibiotics is also rampant for this viral ailment, with antibiotics erroneously prescribed for 13 percent to 75 percent of pediatric patients.

In the retrospective cohort study, the research team pored over deidentified electronic health data for the 2013 calendar year from seven geographically diverse pediatric EDs, capturing 39,445 encounters for these infections that met the study’s inclusion criteria. The patients’ mean age was 3.3 years old. Some 4.3 percent of non-Latino white patients received oral, intravenous or intramuscular antibiotics in the ED or upon discharge, compared with 2.6 percent of Latino patients and 1.9 percent of non-Latino black patients.

“A number of studies have demonstrated disparities with regards to how children of different ethnicities and races are treated in our nation’s pediatric EDs, including frequency of computed tomography scans for minor head trauma, laboratory and radiology tests and pain management. Unfortunately, today’s results provide further evidence of racial and ethnic differences in providing health care in the ED setting,” Dr. Goyal says. “Although, in this case, minority children received evidence-based care, more study is needed to explain why differences in care exist at all.”

At a time of growing antibiotic resistance, the study authors underscored the imperative to decrease excess antibiotic use in kids. Since the 1940s, the nation has relied on antibiotics to contend with diseases such as strep throat. Yet, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, at least 2 million people in the United States are infected with antibiotic-resistant bacteria each year.

According to the study authors, future research should explore the reasons that underlie racial and ethnic differences in antibiotic prescribing, including ED clinicians eager to appease anxious parents as well as implicit clinical bias. Dr. Goyal recently received a National Institutes of Health grant to further study racial and ethnic differences in how children seeking treatment at hospital EDs are managed.

“It may come down to factors as simple as providers or parents believing that ‘more is better,’ despite the clear public health risks of prescribing children antibiotics unnecessarily,” Dr. Goyal adds. “In this case, an intervention that educates parents and providers about appropriate antibiotic use could help the pediatric patients we care for today as well as in the future.”

Boy and Mom with Doctor

Straightening out testicular torsion care

Boy and Mom with Doctor

A new collaborative accelerated care pathway for testicular torsion assessment and treatment may save critical time between diagnosis and intervention.

The clock starts ticking for a child with testicular torsion as soon as the pain starts. To increase the likelihood of successfully salvaging the twisted testicle and spermatic cord, surgical intervention – which involves restoring blood flow to the testis – should ideally occur within six hours from the onset of pain.

That’s six hours for a parent to identify that there is a problem, bring a child to the emergency department (ED) and go through all the steps required to get the child to the operating room. This process starts with an emergency physician, who probably doesn’t see many cases of this relatively rare condition, being able to identify the potential issue and contact the pediatric urologist on call. Next, diagnostic imaging orders need to be placed and actual imaging needs to occur for the diagnosis to be made. Finally, the patient needs to be moved to the pre-operative area, assessed by the anesthesia team and then taken to surgery.

In April 2016, the Division of Urology at Children’s National launched a new, accelerated care pathway for testicular torsion assessment and treatment that was developed collaboratively with the Emergency Department, Diagnostic Imaging and Radiology, the Department of Anesthesiology, and the peri-operative and operating room team.

“What stood out to us when we looked at the total time from identifying the problem to getting to surgery, was the length of time from when the diagnosis was made in the emergency department to the operating room,” says Tanya Davis, M.D., a pediatric urologist who led this new initiative along with Harry Rushton, Jr., M.D., chief of the Division of Urology. “It was an area where we could easily identify and streamline the process to accelerate the time for a patient to get from arrival in the ED to the surgical suite.”

Now, when a patient presents in the emergency department with the symptoms of testicular torsion, there is a straightforward path mapped out for the physician. “Who you need to talk to, how to reach them, relevant phone numbers, details on when to communicate to the attending physician, the ideal order of activities, the ability for residents to quickly transport the patient rather than waiting for hospital transport to surgery, and, most important, making it clear to everyone involved that this condition is a true emergency when every second matters,” Dr. Davis adds.

Torsion ED to OR Graph

Analysis of the streamlined care pathway, which emphasizes communication that the condition is a true emergency, has improved time from ED to OR within target ranges.

Since the initiative’s launch, 21 cases, from referrals and direct diagnosis, have come into the ED. The new protocol is working efficiently, reducing the mean time from the ED to the OR by more than an hour, now averaging below the team’s target goal of less than 2.5 hours from ED arrival to the OR.

Though salvage rates have not improved yet, the team will continue to collect data and monitor the impact of the accelerated pathway. Additionally, Dr. Davis says that a significant need remains for referring emergency and primary care physicians, as well as parents, to understand the condition and its need for urgent treatment. Children’s National urologists are developing handouts for both physicians and families to help raise awareness.

The hope is that more general knowledge of testicular torsion will allow parents, primary care doctors and emergency department staff to expedite diagnosis when a child complains of scrotal pain or has visible discoloration, further reducing the time from onset of pain to successful intervention. With such a short window of time for treatment, the accelerated care pathway is showing promising results.

Improving asthma care at community emergency departments

Through partnerships with community health care facilities, children suffering from severe asthma attacks can receive the type of state-of-the-art care championed by Children’s National.

Asthma is an exceedingly common pediatric disease, affecting nearly 7 million children in the United States, particularly in urban areas. Asthma is responsible for more than 775,000 Emergency Department (EDs) visits each year. However, the vast majority of these visits are to community EDs closest to patients’ homes, rather than to medical centers that specialize in pediatric care.

This fact could potentially lead to big problems for small patients, says Theresa A. Walls, M.D., M.P.H., Director of Emergency Department Outreach at Children’s National Health System. Nearly 70 percent of EDs in the United States treat fewer than 14 children a day, leaving many without the requisite experience or resources critical to effectively treat pediatric patients. Research shows that children seen for asthma in general community EDs are less likely to receive corticosteroid medications systemically — an essential first-line therapy during an asthma attack per National Institutes of Health guidelines — compared with children seen at pediatric EDs. Additionally in these general EDs, children are also more likely to receive unnecessary testing and treatment.

“In our experience, the emergency care of children with asthma in our area mirrors what has been found in national studies: Children are not treated as aggressively in community EDs. If we partner with them and get them to treat asthma as aggressively as we do, it would be a great thing for pediatric patients.”

That’s why when a nurse educator from a local community hospital’s ED contacted them to try to improve pediatric asthma care, Dr. Walls and Children’s colleagues jumped at the opportunity. “They were motivated participants,” she says. “It was a great way to start a partnership.”

The team worked with the community hospital’s ED to implement a pediatric asthma care plan known as a “pathway,” similar to the one currently in place at Children’s National, to ensure that children in the throes of an asthma attack receive evidence-based care that significantly decreases their chances of hospital admission or transfer to a specialty center.

The treatment pathway includes elements such as assigning each patient an asthma score — a number ranging from 1 to 10 that characterizes the severity of the patient’s asthma attack. The treatment plan also includes providing corticosteroids as quickly as possible to more eligible patients.

Effectively implementing this plan requires the efforts of a multidisciplinary team of providers and experts. Beyond the physicians, nurses and respiratory therapists who care for patients directly, this includes pharmacists to ensure proper doses of medications are available in child-friendly liquid forms and information technology specialists to revamp the hospital’s electronic charting system, automatically requesting an asthma score or recommending appropriate medication orders.

To gauge whether mimicking Children’s asthma pathway made a significant difference at the community ED, Dr. Walls and colleagues launched a study that was published online December 8, 2016, in Pediatrics. Comparing data collected for 19 months after the new guidelines were put into place with data from 12 months prior, the researchers made some promising initial findings. Following the pathway implementation, 64 percent of children ages 2 to 17 who arrived at the community ED with asthma symptoms received an asthma score. About 76 percent of these patients with asthma received corticosteroids after the pathway was in place, compared with 60 percent of comparable patients prior to the switchover. The mean time to corticosteroid administration dropped by nearly half, falling from 196 to 105 minutes. Additionally, Dr. Walls says, 10 percent of patients required transfer to another hospital after pathway implementation, compared with 14 percent before — another significant drop.

Dr. Walls notes that there is significant room for improving these metrics and overall asthma care at community EDs. The research team hopes to continue working with the first community hospital and expand their partnership to form a network of other local hospitals. By working together in a large collaboration, she says, hospitals can share resources and knowledge while learning from each other’s successes and mistakes.

“The more we can deliver this state-of-the-art care to the community,” she says, “the better, because that’s where most kids go.”