SAEM Emergency Medicine Exam with Questions and Solutions

SAEM Emergency Medicine Exam with Questions and Solutions A thin 18 year old female complains of acute onset of sharp right-sided chest pain this morning. She has developed some mild shortness of breath during the morning and thought she should get it checked out. Her chest X-ray is shown in the Figure. The next course of action should be: [image] A. Chest tube placement B. Antibiotics C. Electrocardiogram D. Needle decompression ANSWER The answer is A. This patient has a large right-sided spontaneous pneumothorax that is not under tension. She needs oxygen and chest tube placement. This can be done with proper procedural analgesia and sedation since there is no immediate threat. Primary spontaneous pneumothorax tends to occur in healthy young men (and, less commonly, women) of taller than average height. Other risk factors include cigarette smoking, asthma, COPD, interstitial lung disease, connective tissue diseases, and lung cancers. A 28 year old patient arrives after helicopter transfer from an outlying center, where he had been intubated for altered mental status after significant alcohol intoxication. There were no reported signs of chest trauma, but the patient now has decreased breath sounds on the left. His vital signs are stable. Based upon the chest X-ray in the figure, what is the next step in management of this patient? [image] A. Nasogastric tube placement B. Chest tube placement C. Endotracheal tube adjustment