Optimal Management of the Anticoagulated Patient with Life-Threatening Bleeding in the ED and ICU: A Case-based Approach

This EMCREG-International On the Go program serves as a state of the art description of the management life-threatening bleeding in anti-coagulated patients using a case-based approach. The faculty members presenting in this symposium are experts in Emergency Medicine, Neurocritical Care, Cardiovascular Critical Care, and Trauma and Acute Care Surgery. Through this critical care approach to the evaluation and treatment of life-threatening bleeding in anti-coagulated patients, clinicians caring for these patients in the acute care setting (ED and ICU) will be better prepared to manage them. The first three faculty members will discuss the indications for anticoagulation and the pharmacologic agents used for anticoagulation as well as the general approach to anti-coagulated patients with life-threatening bleeding including the use of reversal agents, and will outline the process of developing a hospital-based critical pathway for treatment of life-threatening bleeding in anticoagulated patients. The remainder of the faculty will used case-based presentations to discuss the management of anti-coagulated patients with bleeding associated with significant morbidity and mortality, including intracranial, intraspinal, and gastrointestinal bleeding, bleeding in the cardiovascular ICU and patients receiving ECMO, and bleeding in traumatized patients presenting to the ED requiring surgical treatment and care in the surgical ICU.