Médecine d'urgence [Emergency medicine: updates 2011].

Emergency medicine physicians aim to stabilize or restore vital functions, establish diagnosis, initiate specific treatments and adequately orientate patients. This year, new evidences have improved our knowledge about diagnostic strategy for patients with acute non traumatic headache, treatment of acute atrial fibrillation and outpatient management of acute pulmonary embolism. Reducing injection pain of local anesthetics, reducing irradiation by using alternative diagnostic tools in appendicitis suspicion, and identification of trauma patients who benefit from tranexamic acid administration are other illustrations of the efforts to improve efficacy, safety and comfort in the management of emergency patients.