Monash medical students' research highlighted at ACEM annual scientific meeting

Joash Arnold

Two SCS BMedSc(Hons) students presented their work at this year’s Australasian College for Emergency Medicine (ACEM) 2017 Annual Scientific Meeting, held in Sydney last week. 

Joash Arnold delivered an oral presentation on the utility of CT scanning of the brain in patients with an altered mental state caused by drug overdose or alcohol intoxication, under the supervision of Prof Andis Graudins and A/Prof Robert Meek. 

"My study found that no patients without any signs of head trauma had any acute intracranial pathology on cranial CT and many patients received multiple CT scans for repeated pharmaceutical overdose," said Joash. 

Helen Huang

"CT scanning is not without harm and this study highlighted the need for further research in this area."

Fellow student Helen Huang presented an e-Poster 'Current management practices for suspected cervical spine injury in emergency departments: a prospective cohort study'.

Helen said her project had found that in Monash Health Emergency Departments, 70.1% of patients with suspected cervical spine injury had unnecessary imaging and 94.1% had unnecessary cervical spine immobilisation. 

"These results may help change clinical practice in our EDs," Helen said.

Helen was under the supervision of Dr. Gabriel Blecher and A/Prof Diana Egerton-Warburton, and assisted by A/Prof Robert Meek.