ABC of Emergency Differential Diagnosis

A practical guide to the diagnosis and treatment of acute symptoms and conditions, the ABC of Emergency Differential Diagnosis provides a step-by-step guide to emergency differential diagnosis for non-specialists in a hospital or primary care setting. This new title in the ABC series covers the assessment, diagnosis, treatment, and management of the most common symptoms with 'walk through' diagnosis, clear learning outcomes, and easy to find treatment options. Using the familiar problem-based teaching approach for rapid assimilation of information, case studies in each chapter allow the reader to be sure that they have synthesised the information given and can apply it to clinical cases.

Contributors vii Preface viii 1 Unconsciousness and Coma 1 Roger Dalton 2 Calf Pain 5 Francis Morris and Alan Fletcher 3 Chest Pain – Cardiac 9 Nicki Doddridge 4 High Fever 13 Rachel Foster 5 Vaginal Bleeding 18 Sian Ireland and Karen Selby 6 Transient Weakness 22 Carole Gavin 7 Abdominal Pain – Epigastric 26 Duncan Drury 8 Acute Headache 30 Tom Locker 9 Acutely Painful Joint 34 Rachel Tattersall 10 Chest Pain – Pleuritic 37 Claire Gardner and Kevin Jones 11 Dizziness 41 Scott Davison 12 The Intoxicated Patient 48 Sue Croft 13 The Shocked Patient 52 Arun Chaudhuri 14 Palpitations 57 Charles Heatley 15 Low Back Pain 60 Richard Kendall 16 Acute Confusion 64 Steve Goodacre 17 Shortness of Breath 68 Kevin Jones and Claire Gardner 18 Collapse of Unknown Cause 72 Peter Lawson 19 Abdominal Pain 76 Suzanne Mason and Alastair Pickering Index 81