Hi, this is Steve Carroll, and you're listening to EM Basic.

Today, we are going to be talking about female-specific causes of abdominal pain.

There are a lot of pitfalls with this chief complaint, and there are lots of things that we can

miss, so let's get started.

Today, we will be addressing the major diagnoses of female-specific abdominal pain.

We will go over a topic pregnancy, but we won't go into first trimester vaginal bleeding

because that is a podcast all into itself.

As always, this podcast doesn't represent the views or opinions of the Department of Defense,

the U.S. Army, or my residency program.

So as far as the history, first off, before you get the history, you have to

address one question, is the patient pregnant? Every female who is even close to reproductive age

is pregnant until proven otherwise. I'm sure that you've heard this before, but it's worth repeating,

because if your patient is pregnant, then it changes everything that you do. Often the patient will already have a urine HG done from triage, so you already have a result

for this.

If they don't, then make it your first order of business to get a urine HG.

A lot of patients say that they can't give a sample, but just assure them that we only

need a little bit of urine.

If you're planning on getting

an IV anyway, then you can always order a serum qualitative HG and be done with it, especially

if you think it may be a while until the patient can give a urine sample. So as far as the

history, you'll still do your standard questions about the pain on OPEQRST, onset, provocation, quality, radiation, severity,

and time. This way you hit all the different aspects of the pain. When we talk about female

...