Brady Pregerson, MD

Dr Pregerson's podcast EM Logic focuses on pitfalls in emergency medicine such as confusing a cause with a coincidence, being falsely reassured by false negative tests, or getting burned by illogical assumptions.

We hope to improve the care you provide your patients and keep you from being an honored guest at your department’s next peer review meeting.

The podcast can be heard by clicking here or searching “EM Logic” on Apple podcast or “Pregerson” on Spotify.

Dr Pregerson has been practicing emergency medicine since 2000, lecturing and writing about medical topics since 2004, and has reviewed more than 180 malpractice cases since 2008. He is the author of 3 EM pocket references, the creator of EMresource.org and EM1minuteconsult.com, and the author of the EMN column BradyCardia

If you would like to be considered as a guest on a future episode, contact Dr. Pregerson at Safetydoc@gmail.com.


Articles by Brady Pregerson, MD

The “take home” from this presentation: be cautious with inappropriate use of drugs with or without black box warnings, but maintain a healthy skepticism about some of these warnings. Cases in point: droperidol, antidepressants, clindamycin.

Ramsay Hunt syndrome is a peripheral facial neuropathy that causes unilateral lower motor neuron pattern facial weakness. It is associated with a painful erythematous vesicular rash of the ear or nearby areas and/or oropharynx.

An obese woman in her thirties with a history of fibromyalgia syndrome, depression, polycystic ovarian syndrome, and diabetes mellitus presents to her local emergency department with 1 week of gradually worsening midline back pain. What do these images show?

This patient had unilateral petechiae on the dorsum of the left foot. If the petechiae were symmetric, the first condition on the differential diagnosis would be thrombocytopenia. Here, though, the platelet count was normal. The patient also had a duplex of both the arterial and venous systems that showed complete thrombosis of both the arterial AND venous systems.

The patient has a stage 1 decubitus ulcer on her left heel. Both feet are cool but are the same temperature. Distal pulses are palpable but weak on the good foot; they are not palpable on the left and can only be heard faintly with a handheld Doppler. You note unilateral petechiae on the dorsum of the left foot.

Most cases of “pink eye” are caused by infectious, or occasionally allergic, conjunctivitis. Occasionally, however, a rare and more serious condition-such as a corneal ulcer or iritis-may masquerade as conjunctivitis, as in this patient.

A woman in her 20’s presents for care after 9 days of sore throat and subjective fevers followed by neck stiffness that developed over the last 2 to 3 days. The pain is exacerbated by swallowing and any neck motion. She has had sore throats before, but never this bad or this long and never that made her neck stiff.

For 3 days, a 47-year-old woman had a painful red swelling on her finger.The patient--a cellist--had tried to lance the lesion at home, but itprogressively worsened and was now “throbbing.” She denied fever andnail biting.