JW's top stories of 2013

Journal watch's Ron Walls has a lovely list of the best articles of 2013. His post is shown below unedited.

December 27, 2013 Emergency Medicine Editors' Choice: Top Stories of 2013 Ron M. Walls, MD, FRCPC, FAAEM A perspective on the most important research in the field from the past year

This has been an exciting year for us, as we embraced a broader collaboration with our colleagues in the NEJM Group and changed our name to NEJM Journal Watch Emergency Medicine. We remain devoted to providing clinicians with the information they need to give their patients the best care — and, as part of NEJM Group, we are now poised to do that better than ever. We are constantly exploring new ways to provide you with richer content, enhanced graphics, and a more useful, convenient website, all intended to make our information and guidance timely, relevant, and succinct. As in past years, we have selected for you the studies we feel most important to your practice, summarized these, and provided insightful and directive comments to help you put the knowledge into a clinical perspective. As we do each year, this month we feature the 10 summaries from 2013 that we feel are most important for you to be aware of, to think about, and to discuss with others. You may want to navigate back to the original studies, or simply to review these summaries again to refresh your memory. The year brought new clarity to compression-only CPR, rapid blood pressure control during acute intracranial hemorrhage, and the endlessly distracting etomidate in sepsis argument. Iconoclastic studies challenged the Wells and modified Geneva scores for acute pulmonary embolism, and the Alvarado score for appendicitis. And, of course, there was more. Our Emergency Medicine Top Stories of 2013 are Is Intensive Blood Pressure Lowering Beneficial in Acute Intracerebral Hemorrhage? More Information on Thrombolysis Benefits for Ischemic Stroke Steroid-Pressor Cocktail for In-Hospital Cardiac Arrest? Etomidate Does Not Increase Mortality in Intubated Septic Patients Meta-Analysis Finds Ultrasound Guidance Superior to Landmark Technique for Central Venous Catheter Placement CPR: Compression-Only Wins the Long Race Acetylcysteine for Prevention of Contrast-Induced Nephropathy Pretest Probability for PE: Structured Scoring System or Clinical Judgment? Poor Performance of an Appendicitis Decision Rule Volume of Crystalloid During Massive Transfusion Is Associated with Increased Mortality