Emergency Medicine

Emergency medicine includes any conditions that require immediate medical assistance.

At Medcare, we have an all-inclusive team of qualified emergency physicians with specialization in disaster medicine, medical toxicology, ultrasonography, critical care medicine, hyperbaric medicine, sports medicine, and palliative care. As the first line of defence, for emergency patients, our physicians initiate resuscitation and stabilization and start investigations and interventions to treat illnesses in the acute phase.

Medcare’s Emergency Medicine Department is prepared 24/7 to deal with any kind of injuries or diseases which require immediate medical attention. Our state-of-the-art facilities equipped with the latest technology and staffed with qualified intensivists are always ready to be ‘life-savers’ in any emergency situation!

Some conditions that require urgent and immediate consideration:

Broken bones result in a visibly out-of-place limb or joint, swelling, bruising or bleeding, intense pain, numbness and tingling, broken skin with bone protruding, and an inability to move a limb. This may happen due to a fall from a height, trauma, car accident, or a direct blow. Repetitive forces, such as those caused by running, can cause stress fractures of the foot, ankle, tibia, or hip. It becomes an emergency situation if the person loses consciousness or there is a suspected broken bone in the head, neck, or back.

Chest Pain - Immediate attention is required if there is crushing pain or pressure in the chest, or chest pain along with nausea, sweating, dizziness or shortness of breath. Those symptoms may be suggestive of a heart attack. Else, it may be an indication of pneumonia, pleurisy, pulmonary embolism or inflammation of the joints in your chest. Panic attacks and severe digestive problems can present with chest pain.
 
Difficulty in Breathing - There are a number of lung conditions like asthma, pneumonia, COPD, pulmonary embolism, pulmonary hypertension, croup, and epiglottitis apart from certain heart conditions that can cause you to experience difficulty in breathing.  Such patients may gasp as they feel as though they can’t breathe in, enough oxygen. They may display a faster breathing rate, wheezing, blue fingernails, excessive sweating, or flaring nostrils.
 
Emergency Cancer Care – is required when patients display severe symptoms related to cancer or side effects of their treatment like febrile neutropenia (high fever), severe vomiting, dehydration, respiratory distress, spinal cord compression or acute pain. If their condition worsens or they are distressed, the first place that a patient will contact is the Emergency Department. So, our expert physicians quickly evaluate clinical, laboratory, and radiographic tests, and are able to manage complex critical conditions, especially when there are few or no clinical records available.

Our experienced and well-trained staff is always present to assist with the management of these symptoms or treatment of side effects.

Emergency Ultrasound Services - Fast, high-quality imaging at the point of care saves lives, increases patient safety, and improves clinician efficiency. Having ultrasound available at any time simply lowers the threshold for life-threatening conditions. According to R.Adams Cowley, MD, “there is a golden hour between life and death.” So, treatment of trauma patients during the first 60 minutes after an injury, or critically injured trauma patients, becomes imperative. Increased focus on improving patient safety, while simultaneously providing cost-effective care, is achieved with ultrasound at the bedside and error reduction through ultrasound-guidance of needle procedures.

Heart Attacks - This is a life-threatening emergency that requires quick action. Immediate treatment reduces damage to the heart muscle and saves lives. Warning signals may include chest discomfort that feels like pressure or squeezing pain or pain and discomfort that radiates from beyond your chest to other parts of your upper body. This may be accompanied by unexplained shortness of breath, profuse sweating, nausea, fatigue, anxiety and indigestion.

Heavy or Uncontrolled Bleeding - can be either internal or external. While external heavy bleeding is obvious, internal bleeding is not always apparent. Symptoms of internal bleeding may include loss of consciousness, bleeding from a body opening, such as the mouth, ear, or anus, painful or swollen abdomen, coughing up blood and cold, clammy skin.

Trauma is often the cause of heavy bleeding. This can include blunt, crush, or penetrating trauma. Wounds that bleed heavily are those involving arteries and large veins lead to rapid blood loss and infection. Internal bleeding is a medical emergency.

Loss of Consciousness - There are many reasons for loss of consciousness, some primary reasons being a shock, drug overdose, low blood sugar, epileptic seizure, intoxication, brain injury, anaemia, concussion, and stroke or brain aneurysm. Our emergency physicians need to summon all their skills and experience to understand the underlying cause of loss of consciousness. So it is critical for them to gather information relating to the circumstances of the event like the person's posture immediately before losing consciousness, any sweating or jerking of the limbs and duration, appearance and colour of the person during the event, any biting of the tongue, or injury, any numbness felt, or information regarding any current medication that may have contributed to the condition.

– Occur when the blood supply to the brain is interrupted or when there’s bleeding in the Strokes brain. Its symptoms include blurred vision, tingling, weakness, or numbness on one side of the body, nausea, loss of bladder or bowel control, headache, dizziness, loss of balance or consciousness. How quickly the stroke was treated is critical. It only takes minutes for brain cells to start dying. The risk of disability decreases if clot-busting drugs are administered at the earliest.

Severe Pain - may be a manifestation of an emergency medical condition.  Patients who come to the emergency department are evaluated to determine the severity of their current illness and symptoms. We determine if the patient's current health condition requires hospital admission, or if the patient can be discharged from emergency care with applicable recommendations to seek additional diagnostic or physician evaluation in an outpatient clinic setting.

Toxicology services include acute drug overdoses, hazardous exposures to chemical products or toxic substances, and the management of drug withdrawal syndromes. The management of intoxicated patients requires skill and precision because of the challenge in the diagnosis and treatment of overdose cases. The highest priority lies in securing the airway and breathing and stabilizing the circulation. A focused physical examination will reveal clues about the substance which has been abused and the toxidromes.

Trauma or Burns - Trauma usually results in haemorrhage, multiple organ dysfunction syndrome, and cardiopulmonary arrest.  When a burn does occur, it is vitally important that the proper treatment is given quickly. First-degree and second-degree burns are smaller than the size of the patient's hand. If the area burned is larger than this, or involves functional parts of the body such as feet, face, eye, ears and groin or is located over major joints, more focused medical attention is needed. Other burns that are electrical, chemical, or related to lightening or result in inhalation injury need urgent medical attention too.

At Medcare, emergency physicians are trained to complete a quick and focused examination first, then make decisions based on the available information. An emergency physician is an expert who needs to ‘deliver’ in any situation that he is faced with.  If required, physicians from other medical and surgical specialities like trauma surgery, obstetrics, orthopaedics, and radiology are called for consultation, to assist in charting a plan of care for the patient while in the emergency room.