Anne-Cathrine Braarud

• Ph.D.
• Medical director at Oslo University Hospital

Aims To measure all‐cause mortality risk after an ambulance‐attended non‐fatal opioid overdose and associations with number of days following attendance, and individual and clinical characteristics. Design A prospective observational study. Setting Oslo, Norway. Participants Patients treated with naloxone for opioid overdose by Oslo Emergency Se...

Background: Timely treatment of acute stroke depends on early identification and triage. Improved methods for recognition of stroke in the prehospital setting are needed. We aimed to assess whether use of the National Institutes of Health Stroke Scale (NIHSS) by paramedics in the ambulance could improve communication with the hospital, augment tri...

Background Less than 50% of stroke patients in Norway reach hospital within 4 h of symptom onset. Early prehospital identification of stroke and triage to the right level of care may result in more patients receiving acute treatment. Quality of communication between paramedics and the stroke centre directly affects prehospital on-scene time, emphas...

Aims: To measure and evaluate clinical response to nasal naloxone in opioid overdoses in the pre-hospital environment. Design: Randomised, controlled, double-dummy, blinded, non-inferiority trial, and conducted at two centres. Setting: Participants were included by ambulance staff in Oslo and Trondheim, Norway, and treated at the place where t...

Background Less than 50% of stroke patients in Norway reach hospital within four hours of symptom onset. Early prehospital identification of stroke and triage to right level of care may result in more patients receiving acute treatment. Quality of communication between paramedics and the stroke centre directly affects prehospital on-scene time, emp...

Introduction Intranasal (IN) naloxone is widely used to treat opioid overdoses. The advantage of nasal administration compared with injection lies in its suitability for administration by lay people as it is needless. Approved formulations of nasal naloxone with bioavailability of approximately 50% have only undergone trials in healthy volunteers,...

Background: Amidst the ongoing opioid crisis there are debates regarding the optimal route of administration and dosages of naloxone. This applies both for lay people administration and emergency medical services, and in the development of new naloxone products. We examined the characteristics of naloxone administration, including predictors of dos...

Introduction: Amidst the ongoing opioid crisis there are debates regarding the optimal route of administration and dosages of naloxone. This applies both for lay people administration and emergency medical services, and in the development of new naloxone products. We examined the characteristics of naloxone administration, including predictors of d...

Background No consensus based national standard for interhospital transports of critically ill patients exists in Norway. The local hospitals are responsible for funding, organizing and performing these transports, resulting in potentially different level of care for the critically ill patients depending on local hospital resources and not the leve...

Background: Although the United States and numerous other countries are amidst an opioid overdose crisis, access to safe injection facilities remains limited. Methods: We used prospective data from ambulance journals in Oslo, Norway to describe the patterns, severity, and outcomes of opioid overdoses, and compared these characteristics among variou...

Trauma is the leading cause of death for young people in Norway. Studies indicate that several of these deaths are avoidable if the patient receives correct initial treatment. The trauma team is responsible for initial hospital treatment of traumatized patients, and team members have previously reported that non-technical skills as communication, l...

n of this supplement was supported by Akuttjo urnalen Arena AS Meeting

An increasing and serious heroin overdose problem in Oslo has mandated the increasing out-of-hospital use of naloxone administered by paramedics. The aim of this study was to determine the frequencies and characteristics of adverse events related to this out-of-hospital administration by paramedics. A one-year prospective observational study from F...

To study long-term survival and estimate the costs per year of survival after out-of-hospital cardiac arrest of cardiac origin. Cardiac arrest patients treated by the physician-manned ambulance in Oslo from January 1971 to June 1992. The condition of the patient when discharged from hospital was noted and survival followed until June 2002. Costs of...

Background. In order to improve the results for patients with acute myocardial infarction, unnecessary delays before treatment must be avoided. We wanted to test if the use of pre-hospital 12-lead ECG would reduce the interval from onset of symptoms to percutaneous coronary intervention in these patients. Materials and methods. From October 2000 to...

Theoretical models for patient-physician communication in clinical practice are frequently described in the literature. Respecting patient autonomy is an ethical problem the physician faces in a medical emergency situation. No theoretical physician-patient model seems to be ideal for solving the communication problem in clinical practice. Theoretic...

This survey focuses on the subject of euthanasia. A questionnaire was sent to 90 doctors working in pain clinics in Norwegian hospitals. 60 doctors (67%) returned the questionnaire. Only 18 doctors (30%) had ever received a request for euthanasia. The patients who requested euthanasia suffered from refractory pain, depression, fear of pain and fear...

The aim of the study was to evaluate whether mass-mailing of a 12-month wall calendar which focused on child and infant safety and first aid treatment had any educational effect on lay people. The calendar included algorithms for removal of a foreign body from the airways and infant and child CPR. The knowledge and skills in these procedures were t...

This paper presents the incidence of, and contents of guidelines for do-not-resuscitate orders (DNR orders) in somatic hospital departments in Oslo. Only five out of 14 departments had written guidelines. There was a wide range of contents concerning illness criteria, decision-making responsibility and patient and family participation in the decisi...

During in-depth interviews about treatment decisions made by paramedics in cases of cardiac arrest in Oslo, other aspects of their work were frequently brought up. Twenty-four of 33 paramedics emphasized the importance of taking care of bystanding relatives, and frequently spent up to 45-60 min with them after unsuccessful resuscitations. Twenty-th...

Seventeen paramedic students, all of whom are novice intubators, performed laryngoscopic and Trachlight intubation after supervised training for 90 min on two manikins (Laerdal, AMBU) and 30 min on cadavers. A maximum of two intubation attempts lasting a maximum 30 s each were permitted on each manikin and the cadaver. The time for confirming tube...

Paramedics in Oslo are allowed to make decisions about withholding or terminating cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR). In order to elicit the criteria used, 35 paramedics and nine doctors were interviewed after 70 episodes of cardiac arrest outside-of-hospital. CPR was not attempted in 21 patients, and discontinued in the field in 28 patients. Spon...