The patients you think about

Have a look at this article. I've been following the blog on twitter and learning quite a bit. This case in particular raised my shackles a bit.

Similar aged woman presents late at night to my ED with a week of deep, dull chest pain. No risk factors. Her ECG was beautiful. D-dimer was negative. OE viral URTI. No improvement with ibuprofen. I was reassured and sent her home to follow up with her family doc ASAP.

Even now, seems reasonable.

I recognize though that I'm someone who suffers from "Nah, it can't be." I know in this case I did all the investigations I would have done for a 45 year old except calling radiology to get a CXR.

Having cases like the one described in the ECG teaching help me to keep perspective. I think we need to share. These odd cases so we remember that not everything we learned in med school was true.

The trick, as ever, is protecting patient privacy while expanding the knowledge base we have available.
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