Clinical Medicine

Most patients who walk into an emergency department with chest pain do not have a heart attack. But some do, and telling the two groups apart quickly — without either sending home someone in the early stages of a cardiac event or admitting everyone with heartburn for an expensive, days-long work-up — is one of the harder judgment calls in emergency medicine. The HEART Score…

Sepsis kills fast, and the earlier it is recognized, the better a patient’s odds. But sepsis rarely announces itself with one clear sign — it shows up as a cluster of subtle changes that are easy to miss during a busy shift. That is the problem qSOFA (quick Sequential Organ Failure Assessment) was built to solve: a three-item bedside check, calculable in under a minute,…