May 2025; papers of the month

Welcome back to the podcast!

We've got three papers this month covering the breadth of Emergency Care presentations and locations; from prehospital arrests, ketamine for analgesia in trauma and those complex elderly patients presenting with abdominal pain.

First up we look at the use of prehospital thrombolysis for out of hospital cardiac arrest, something some critical care services are using for suspected PEs and MIs. But what are the outcomes for these patients and how accurate are the clinical suspicions that lead to the thrombolysis?

Next up we look at an excellent prehospital RCT, PACKMaN, on the use of ketamine vs morphine for patients with pain following trauma. Is ketamine safe? Is it superior? And what is the side effect profile of each of these approaches? We're also lucky enough to have the lead author, Mike Smyth, come on to give his thoughts on the paper and what it might mean for clinical practice

Finally we have a think about abdominal pain in the elderly population. Without a cause for the pain being found this can feel like a very high risk group of patients to discharge. Our final paper helps quantify that risk further, inform our decision making and identify factors that are associate with an increased morbidity and mortality.

Once again we’d love to hear any thoughts or feedback either on the website or via X @TheResusRoom!

Simon & Rob