Rescue Task Force: Airway Management
Mike Brown and Mark Litwinko discuss dealing with a patient who has a chest wound during a mass-casualty incident.
Tips for Using a Small-Volume Nebulizer
Mike McEvoy shares some tips on delivering medicine to a patient for using a small-volume nebulizer.
What is Capnography?
The word “capnography” is derived from a Latin twist based on an original Greek concept. The Greeks first wrote about combustion centers throughout the body that they said released a byproduct called “Kapnos,” or in Latin, “Capnos”; both are words for...
Successfully Selling CPAP
The art of selling CPAP to a patient can make or break chances for success.
Vintage Manual Ventilation: The 1,500 mL BVM (Bag-Valve-Mask Manual Resuscitator)
Although the device still works as designed, is still in service and being used by well-intentioned clinicians, it should be on the shelf with the Medical Anti-Shock Trousers, LifePak 5 and Biophone. While change is sometimes slow, and healthcare providers can be described as conservatively fixed, lung protective ventilation is the current standard of care.
Waveform Analysis vs. Physical Assessment In Respiratory Patients
The capnography waveform, not the ETCO2 number, is used for airway assessment. If the patient ventilates, or you ventilate the patient, and a boxy waveform appears, then that breath is patent and went in and out of the lungs unobstructed. When your patient...Waveform Assessment & High ETCO2
Capnography is the only tool in the universe that is non-invasive, in real time and simultaneously assesses a patient’s airway patency, quality of breathing, perfusion/shock status and metabolic state. How does it work? What does the waveform tell you vs....Pulse Oximetry, ETCO2 and PaCO2
While quantitative waveform capnography and pulse oximetry are both infrared technologies and may seem like similar measurements, they assess very different things. Capnography is a direct measurement of ventilation and, indirectly, circulatory and metabolic...About Troy Valente
Troy Valente (pronounced “va-len-tee”) was born and raised in California and has lived in Northern Colorado since 2001 with his wife (a NICU nurse) and 2 kids. Troy started his EMS career in 2002 becoming a paramedic in 2006. Prior to...
Pediatric BIPAP
Deployment of CPAP and BIPAP in EMS has evolved over the last decade and is arguably first line intervention for acute respiratory distress for multiple adult populations. Despite these advances, we have left children behind for no reason. Pediatric patients are well...
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