Tricks of the Trade: Top 100 EM articles

In this educator-version of Tricks of the Trade, I wanted to let you know that the folks over at Denver Health (Dr. Jeff Druck) and the Carolinas EM programs (Dr. Dave Pearson) are updating their "Colorado Compendium of Top EM articles".

For those interested in keeping abreast of the landmark articles up to 2009, take a look at the list of Top 100 EM articles that they compiled. This publication is made available for FREE through the Western Journal of Medicine in the article entitled: "The Colorado Compendium: An Article-Based Literature Review Program"

Go directly to West JEM article.

Selecting "Supporting Material" in the left column will download the 104-page PDF to your desktop.

They review some classics including:

• "The rational clinical examination. Is this patient having a myocardial infarction?" in JAMA 1998.
• "The International Registry of Acute Aortic Dissection (IRAD): new insights into an old disease" in JAMA 2000.
• "Evaluation of D-dimer in the diagnosis of suspected deep-vein thrombosis" in NEJM 2003.
• "The Canadian C-spine rule versus the NEXUS low-risk criteria in patients with trauma" in NEJM 2003.
• "Computed tomography of the head before lumbar puncture in adults with suspected meningitis" in NEJM 2001.

The Compendium editors are looking for suggestions on recent literature that you feel should also make the list. One publication that I find missing is:

• Kuppermann N et al. Identification of children at very low risk of clinically-important brain injuries after head trauma: a prospective cohort study. Lancet. 2009 Oct 3;374(9696):1160-70. 

Anyone other suggestions?