NEJM Journal Watch Emergency Medicine Top Stories of 2019

Dear Readers,

This has been a notable year for significant articles relevant to our specialty. We've not only seen a long-overdue uptick in articles related to gun-violence prevention but also, unfortunately, necessary articles on the management of mass violence events and tourniquet use for hemorrhage control. We have continued to focus on the opioid epidemic, fine-tuned our evaluation of pulmonary embolism in pregnant patients, and explored the use of vasopressin in patients with trauma. We have targeted the questionable qSOFA criteria and studied methods for increasing the survivability of out-of-hospital cardiac arrest. CRASH-3 was released late in the year, with controversial results, and we wrap up our list with a study that validates all the work we do caring for patients in the emergency department.

The top NEJM Journal Watch Emergency Medicine stories for 2019 are:

• When Is It Appropriate for Health Professionals to Discuss Firearms with Their Patients?

• Planning for the Next Mass Violence Event

• Do Adult Tourniquets Work in Pediatric Patients?

• Risk for Death in the Year Following an Emergency Department Visit for Opioid Overdose

• Risk Stratification and D-Dimer Can Safely Exclude Pulmonary Embolism in Pregnant Patients

• Low-Dose Vasopressin in Patients with Traumatic Hemorrhagic Shock

• Most qSOFA-Positive Patients Do Not Have Sepsis

• Survival in Out-of-Hospital Cardiac Arrest After Chest Compression–Only CPR vs. Standard CPR

• Tranexamic Acid Reduces Mortality for Patients with Mild-to-Moderate Isolated Traumatic Brain Injury

• Trends in Mortality After Emergency Department Visits by Medicare Patients

Our best wishes for 2020.