All posts by The Trauma Pro

Surgical Residents And The Danger Of Social Media

July 18, 2017 The Trauma Pro Leave a comment

Social media usage is ubiquitous, and has a higher prevalence of usage in younger age groups. When the paper I am reviewing was written, 71% of adults with internet access reported using Facebook, and two thirds checked it daily. And now, three years later, I’m sure it’s used even more.

Unfortunately, many people don’t have a good sense of what is appropriate or not. And coupled with confusion about privacy settings, some post things that they probably shouldn’t. And unfortunately, everyone else on the internet can view them.

As a resident, it is more common to be “fired” from residency for unprofessional conduct, not cognitive failure or malpractice. When one is under investigation, the professional organization conducting it may look at prior behavior. And these days, that behavior may be years old and posted for all to see.

Is this a problem? Surgeons at the University of Nebraska were interested in how Facebook was used by surgical residents. They identified surgical residencies at 12 states in the Midwest region. They found all surgical residencies within the region and searched their program websites for the names of active residents. Facebook accounts were then created by the authors and were used to determine which of these residents had their own accounts.

The researchers then viewed those pages and classified the content into three categories: professional, potentially unprofessional, and clearly unprofessional. Definitions were based on criteria from the ACGME and the AMA. Accounts that were not accessible to the public were judged professional.

A total of 57 surgical residencies were identified, and 40 provided an institutional website with a current roster of their residents. Of 996 surgical residents, the accounts of 319 residents could be evaluated.

Here are the factoids:

One third of residents had identifiable Facebook accounts
About 74% had only professional content on their site
This means that a quarter had potentially or clearly unprofessional content on their sites
Clearly unprofessional content included:
- binge drinking (5 pints of beer in front of a dinner plate, keg stands, comments about being drunk or hung over)
- sexually suggestive photos (simulated oral sex, female residents in bikinis pointing to their breasts, simulating intercourse on a large cannon)
- HIPAA violations

Bottom line: Be careful! The use of social media is pervasive. Inappropriate or unprofessional can end a career, or can come back to haunt you years later. And this phenomenon is not limited to surgical residents. All professionals, even attending physicians, may succumb to its charms.

Know the social media policy for your hospital or residency program. Be very careful, and think very carefully about everything you post. Take advantage of built-in privacy settings for the platform you are using. But don’t assume that using them will keep inappropriate material from getting out. If in doubt, show your potential post to a trusted and reliable friend for a “second opinion.” Otherwise you may find your (not so) friendly “compliance police” knocking on your door. And possibly ending your career.

Reference: An assessment of unprofessional behavior among surgical residents on Facebook: a warning of the dangers of social media. J Surg Educ 71(6):e28-e32, 2014.

Head

What Happens To Your Average Subarachnoid Hemorrhage?

July 14, 2017 The Trauma Pro Leave a comment

Management of traumatic brain injury (TBI) is a common issue faced by trauma professionals. And isolated subarachnoid hemorrhage (SAH) is one of the more common presentations. In many centers, this diagnosis frequently results in admission to the hospital, neurosurgical consultation, and repeat imaging.

Is this too much care? We adopted a practice guideline nearly two years ago based on our own clinical experience that eliminated the last two. Patients were still admitted for neurologic monitoring for 16 hours. But is even this too much?

What we really need is a better understanding of the natural history of uncomplicated traumatic SAH. Well, a study from Sunnybrook and the University of Toronto does just that. They performed a 17 year meta-analysis of the literature on isolated SAH with mild TBI (GCS 13-15). They pared their initial literature search of nearly 2900 studies down to the usual few, 13 in this case. All but one were retrospective, of course, and they had the usual design flaws.

Here are the factoids:

How many patients eventually needed neurosurgical intervention? 0 (Well, almost zero. It was 0.0017%, to be exact.)
How many had progression of the SAH? About 6%
How many had neurologic deterioration? 0.75%, which included two patients with increased headache and one with some confusion. Two developed intraparenchymal hemorrhage (one was on anticoagulants)
How many died? Only 1 died from neurologic causes, and that patient was anticoagulated at the time of injury.

Bottom line: It looks like we may be overdoing it for patients with isolated SAH and mild TBI. The natural history seems to be fairly benign, unless the patient is taking anticoagulants. The type of drug was not specified, so warfarin, aspirin, clopidogrel, and the newer anticoagulants should all be included.

Perhaps it’s time to update the our practice guidelines further. It looks like most of these simple, isolated SAH can be evaluated and released. However, if the GCS is 13 or 14, they should still be admitted for monitoring for a short period. And if on anticoagulants, admission with a repeat CT is in order.

Related posts:

Reference: The clinical significance of isolated traumatic subarachnoid hemorrhage in mild traumatic brain injury: A meta-analysis. J Trauma , published ahead of print, July 8 2017.

Imaging

Routine CT After Operative Exploration For Penetrating Trauma

July 12, 2017 The Trauma Pro Leave a comment

CT scans are commonly used to aid the workup of patients with blunt trauma. They are occasionally useful in penetrating trauma, specifically when penetration into a body cavity is uncertain and the patient has no hard signs that would send him or her immediately to the operating room.

Is there any role in operative penetrating trauma, after the patient has already been to the OR? The dogma has always been that the eyeballs of the surgeon in the OR are better than any other imaging modality. Really?

The surgical group at San Francisco General addressed this question by retrospectively reviewing 6 years of their operative penetrating injury registry data. They were interested in finding how many occult injuries (seen with CT but not by the surgeon) were found on a postop CT. A total of 225 patients who underwent operative management of penetrating abdomen or chest injury were included.

Here are the factoids:

Only 110 patients had a postop CT scan; 73 had scans within the first 24 hours, the other 37 were scanned later
Rationale for early scan was to investigate retroperitoneal injury in half of patients, but frequently no indication was given (41%)
Rationale for late scan was for workup of ileus in one third, or for evaluation of new or unexpected clinical problems
Occult injuries were found in about half of early CT patients (52%), and 22% of late CT patients
The most common occult injuries were fractures, GU issues, regraded solid organ injury, and unrecognized vascular injuries
Several management changes occurred, including

Bottom line: There appears to be a significant benefit to sending some penetrating injury patients to CT in the early postop period. Specifically, those with injury to the retroperitoneum, deep into the liver, near the spine, or with multiple and complicated injuries would benefit. Simple stabs and gunshots that stay away from these areas/structures probably do not need followup imaging.

Rreference: Routine computed tomography after recent operative exploration for penetrating trauma: What injuries do we miss? J Trauma, published ahead of print, May 11, 2017.

Complications

Top 10 Worst Complications: #1 Nasocerebral Tube

July 11, 2017 The Trauma Pro 1 Comment

Minor complications from nasogastric tube insertion occur relatively frequently. Emesis is fairly common when the gag reflex is stimulated by the tube in the back of the oropharynx. An infrequent but possibly fatal one is insertion through the cribriform plate.

The cribriform plate is located directly posterior to the nares and is part of the ethmoid bone. It is very porous in nature and weaker than the surrounding portions of the ethmoid. It is easily fractured, and can be seen is association with basilar skull fractures. This is one source for rhinorrhea in patients with these fractures.

Cribriform fracture is a contraindication to unprotected insertion of a nasogastric tube. If you look at the sagittal section below, the plate lies directly behind the nares. When inserting the NG tube, we are usually taught to aim the tube straight back. Unfortunately, this aims it directly at the cribriform. If a fracture is present, it is possible that you may be inserting a nasocerebral tube!

Cribriform plate - sagittal section

The usual symptoms when this occurs consist of immediate neurologic deterioration to coma, and a unilateral or bilateral blown pupil. The tube must not be withdrawn, because it will cause significant injury to the base of the brain. A stat neurosurgical consultation must be obtained, and if the patient is salvageable, the tube must be withdrawn through a craniectomy.

To avoid this dreaded complication, identify patients at risk for cribriform injury. They are:

patients with signs of trauma from eyebrows to zygoma
comatose patients
patients with signs of basilar skull fracture (Battle’s sign, raccoon eyes, oto- or rhinorrhea)

If your patient is at risk, follow these guidelines:

first, does the patient really need a gastric tube?
if comatose, insert an orogastric tube
if awake, don’t put the tube in their mouth, as they will gag continuously. Instead, place a lubricated, curved nasal airway. Then lube up a slightly smaller Salem sump tube and pass it through the airway.

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