Morning Medical Update: Face masks and wildfire smoke; Non-sterile, single-use pneumatic tourniquet cuffs conservation strategies; Suicide assessment tool

Face masks and wildfire smoke

Experts say wearing N95 or KN95 masks will help protect you from wildfire smoke and COVID. According to Dr. William Lang, the chief medical officer at WorldClinic and a former director of the White House Medical Unit,‘N95 mask filters out 95% of particles larger than 0.3 microns, so they’re very efficient with keeping out the 2.5-micron particles in wildfire smoke.’ Cloth masks may be beneficial for short periods.

Non-sterile, single-use pneumatic tourniquet cuffs conservation strategies

The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is advising physicians on ways to conserve single-use pneumatic tourniquet cuffs during the shortage. They advise physicians to reuse if necessary, recommending they are cleaned between uses. To disinfect, soak the cuff in 70%-90% in ethyl or isopropyl alcohol for 1 minute.

Suicide assessment tool

A new checklist may be able to tell which suicidal patients need to be admitted and which should be safely discharged. The Abbreviated Suicide Crisis Syndrome Checklist (A-SCS-C) is allegedly "shows robust clinical utility and may actually reduce the limitations of relying on self-reported suicidal ideation to determine suicide risk," study co-author Lisa Cohen, PhD, clinical professor of psychiatry, Carl Icahn School of Medicine, Mount Sinai Beth Israel, New York, said in an interview.