About Anton Helman

Dr. Anton Helman is an Emergency Physician at North York General in Toronto. He is an Assistant Professor at the University of Toronto, Division of Emergency Medicine and the Education Innovation Lead at the Schwartz-Reisman Emergency Medicine Instititute. He is the founder, editor-in-chief and host of Emergency Medicine Cases.

Best Case Ever 56 Anion Gap Metabolic Acidosis

In this month's Best Case Ever on EM Cases Dr. Ross Claybo and Dr. Keerat Grewal tell the story of a patient with a complicated anion gap metabolic acidosis. We discuss how to sort through the differential diagnosis with a better mnemonic than MUDPILES, the controversy around administering sodium bicarbonate for metabolic acidosis, the indications for fomepizole and the value of taking time to to build a therapeutic relationship with your ED patients...

Episode 93 – PALS Guidelines

I remember when I started practicing emergency medicine a decade and a half ago it seemed that any kid who came to our ED in cardiac arrest died. I know, depressing thought. But, over the past 15 years, survival to discharge from pediatric cardiac arrest has markedly improved, at least for in-hospital arrests. This is probably mostly due to an emphasis on high-quality CPR and advances in post-resuscitation care; nonetheless the more comfortable, knowledgeable and prepared we are for the always scary critically ill pediatric patient, the more likely we will be able to resuscitate them successfully - which is always a huge save.

Best Case Ever 55 Pediatric Cerebral Herniation

In anticipation of the upcoming EM Cases main episode on Pediatric Polytrauma Dr. Suzanne Beno, Co-director of the Trauma Program at the Hospital for Sick Children in Toronto, tells her Best Case Ever of a child who suffers a severe traumatic head injury with signs of raised intracranial pressure and cerebral herniation. She discusses the importance of being vigilant when presented with classic patterns of injury, the use of hypertonic saline, crisis resource management and shared decision making with consultants...

Episode 92 – Aortic Dissection Live from The EM Cases Course

While missing aortic dissection was considered "the standard" in the late 20th century, our understanding of the clinical diagnoses has improved considerably since the landmark International Registry of Aortic Dissection (IRAD) study in 2000. Nonetheless, aortic dissection remains difficult to diagnosis with 1 in 6 being missed at the initial ED visit. With the help of Dr. David Carr we’ll discuss how to pick up atypical presentations of aortic dissection without over-imaging as well as manage them like pros by reviewing: 1. The 5 Pain Pearls, 2. The concepts of CP +1 and 1+ CP, 3. Physical exam pearls, 4. CXR pearls and blood test pitfalls, and 5. The importance of the correct order and aggressive use of IV medications. So with these objectives in mind…

Journal Jam 9 – D-dimer to Rule Out Aortic Dissection

The EM Cases Team is very excited to bring you not only a new format for the Journal Jam podcast but a new member of the team, Dr. Rory Spiegel, aka @EM_Nerd an Emergency Medicine physician from The University Maryland Medical Center in Baltimore, the founder of the EM Nerd blog and the co-host of the Annals of EM podcast. The new format sees Justin Morgenstern, Teresa Chan, Rory Spiegel and Anton Helman doing deep dives into the world's literature on specific practical questions while highlighting some important evidence-based medicine concepts. The question we ask in this Journal Jam podcast: Is there a role for D-dimer testing in the workup of aortic dissection in the ED?

Episode 91 Occult Knee Injuries Pearls and Pitfalls

There are a whole slew of very important occult knee injuries - those that have a normal or near normal x-ray – that can cause serious morbidity if you miss them, and for the catchall soft tissue injuries there are some subtleties in diagnosis and management that will make a real difference to our patients. Arun Sayal and Hossein Mehdian answer questions such as: When should we suspect a spontaneously reduced knee dislocation? Do all patients suspected of a spontaneous knee dislocation require a CT angiogram to rule out vascular injury? Which patients with a low energy mechanism are at risk for knee dislocation and vascular complications? How can you increase the accuracy of the active straight leg raise in assessing for quadriceps and patella tendon rupture? What is an easy way to identify patella baja and patella alta on a knee x-ray? What are the indications for ultrasound of the knee? What are the true indications for a knee immobilizer and how can knee immobilizers kill our patients? and many more...

Episode 90 – Low and Slow Poisoning

One of the things we need to think about whenever we see a patient who’s going low and slow with hypotension and bradycardia is an overdose. B-blockers, calcium channel blockers (CCB) and digoxin are some of the most frequently prescribed cardiovascular drugs. And inevitably we’re gonna be faced with both intentional and unintentional overdoses from these drugs in the ED. If we can recognize these overdoses early and manage them appropriately, well - we’ll save some lives...

EM Cases Best of 2016 Top Ten

The year 2016 was one of the most productive one in the entire 7 year history of EM Cases with a total of 29 podcast releases, the introduction of the CritCases blog, the Q & A Pearl of the Week, Just The Nuggets emails, BEEM Cases, the expansion of the Waiting to Be Seen blog, the second EM Cases Digest ebook and the first ever EM Cases Course. The website was viewed by 227,200 visitors, and podcast downloads totaled a whopping 1,626,190 downloads in 2016, bringing us to over 3.5 million podcast downloads since inception. Based on a blend of the number of podcast downloads, webpage views, social media engagement, scores on the questionnaires at the bottom of each post, number of positive emails and comments that I received, and my own favs, I'm pleased to bring you the EM Cases Best of 2016 Top 10 picks of 2016...

Best Case Ever 53 – TTP

As EM Cases has grown and expanded over the past 7 years I've had the pleasure of working with a team of talented people. This Best Case Ever was produced by two all-star EM residents from Ottawa, podcaster Dr. Rajiv Vairavanathan and editor Dr. Richard Hoang. In this all-resident Best Case Ever we interview Dr. Chris Belcher from University of Kentucky about TTP - Thrombotic Thrombocytopenic Purpura, that rare but often elusive clotting disorder that picks off multiple organs and has a near 100% mortality rate without treatment...

Best Case Ever 52 – Pediatric Hypothermia Cardiac Arrest

In anticipation of EM Cases Episode 90 on the Pediatric Advanced Life Support (PALS) guidelines with the lead author Dr. Allan DeCaen and Dr. Anthony Crocco, Dr. DeCaen tells his Best Case Ever showing us the value of orchestrated team work and a great example of the saying, "they're not dead until they're warm and dead"...

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