A 6-Year-Old Boy with a Lesion on His Ear

A 6-Year-Old Boy with a Lesion on His Ear

The patient, a 6-year-old boy, presented to a pediatric urgent care center for a well-child visit. In the exam room, the father pointed out a red lesion on the helical rim of the patient’s ear. The papule was smooth and well-defined and didn’t seem to bother the boy. The father reports that he and the boy’s mother have grown concerned as they’ve noticed it develop over several months. View the image and consider what your …

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A 65-Year-Old Man with Shortness of Breath and a History of Heart Failure

A 65-Year-Old Man with Shortness of Breath and a History of Heart Failure

A 65-year-old male with a history of heart failure presents to an urgent care center with shortness of breath of 2 days duration. He denies chest pain, nausea, or vomiting. He reports that he ran out of his medications about a week ago. View the ECG and consider what your diagnosis and next steps would be. Resolution of the case is described on the next page. (Case presented by Catherine Reynolds, MD, McGovern Medical School, …

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The Last Hour Problem

The Last Hour Problem

It’s 8 pm and I’m 9 hours into a 10-hour shift when four new patients walk in. Even though I’m feeling drained, I smile warmly as each passes my workstation. I “eyeball” them each as they walk by; my grin persists because they all seem stable and my “TUR” for this shift in the emergency department is now only 45 minutes away. TUR (or “time until relief”) is a metric I continuously track with ruthless …

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Weight Loss, Abdominal Pain, and Distension in a 74-Year-Old Woman

Weight Loss, Abdominal Pain, and Distension in a 74-Year-Old Woman

Urgent message: Not all GI complaints can be attributed to gastrointestinal pathology; symptoms of dyspepsia, vomiting, early satiety, weight loss, and abdominal pain may also be from a pelvic etiology. Fabrizia Faustinella, MD, PhD and L. Alexandre Frigini, MD INTRODUCTION Gastrointestinal complaints are common in ambulatory centers, urgent care, and in emergency departments. The symptoms of abdominal pain, nausea, and vomiting account for 12% to 15% of ED visits.1 Several non-GI intra-abdominal, endocrine, and pelvic …

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Assessing the Rate at which Pacemaker and Defibrillator Patients Present to the Emergency Room with their Manufacturer ID Card: A Cross Sectional Study

Assessing the Rate at which Pacemaker and Defibrillator Patients Present to the Emergency Room with their Manufacturer ID Card: A Cross Sectional Study

Urgent message: Care can be delayed if an urgent care or emergency clinician attempts to interrogate the CIED of a patient who does not know their device manufacturer and does not carry their ID card. This scenario illustrates the importance of patient education in care centers, such as the emergency department and urgent care. Tinh M. Le; James F. Neuenschwander, MD, FACEP; Mary Jones, DNP; Ankur Parekh; Hana Le; Kaitlyn Cedoz; and Clark Daugherty ABSTRACT …

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Return to Sports in the COVID-19 Era: A Clinical Review

Return to Sports in the COVID-19 Era: A Clinical Review

Urgent message: The COVID-19 worldwide pandemic has changed sports as we know it. Returning athletes back to sport safely continues to be widely debated among physicians in cardiology, primary care, infectious disease, and sports medicine. The return-to-play process after a COVID-19 infection will depend on the severity of their infection, duration of symptoms in the context of any concerning past medical history, and/or family history. Brian Harvey, DO and Natalie Stork, MD CASE PRESENTATION A …

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An Unresponsive Pupil in the Urgent Care: Can A Diagnosis Be Made from the Bedside History and Exam?

An Unresponsive Pupil in the Urgent Care: Can A Diagnosis Be Made from the Bedside History and Exam?

Urgent message: Ocular complaints for which there is no immediate, obvious explanation do not necessarily have to be referred to the emergency room or ophthalmology. Employing the process of elimination to narrow down a broad differential, using the available evidence, can expedite the correct diagnosis while allowing the patient to remain in the urgent care. Kayla Penny, BS; Joseph LaRochelle, PharmD, BCPPS, FCCP; Deirdre Hooper, MD; Haley Caire, BS; and Kelsey Rooney, BS CASE PRESENTATION …

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Abstracts in Urgent Care – October 2021

Abstracts in Urgent Care – October 2021

Duration of UTI Treatment in Men Acute Respiratory Illness in Children Isopropyl Alcohol for Acute Nausea in Adults Neurological Events and Metronidazole Prescribing Do the Modified Sgarbossa Criteria Offer Advantages Over the Original? Safety of a Second COVID-19 Vaccination Dose in Patients Who Had a Reaction to the First How Long Should We Treat UTI in Men? Take-Home Point: In afebrile men with UTI symptoms, a 7-day course of ciprofloxacin or trimethoprim/sulfamethoxazole was noninferior to …

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