“Casualty” is outdated term for “emergency medicine”

EDITOR—Rapid assessment of chest pain continues to attract the attention of healthcare planners and providers involved in the management of this common emergency. Wood et al's editorial on this subject makes cogent arguments for a clinical trial to assess the impact of rapid medical and surgical management of exertional angina.1

We are concerned at the terminology used by Wood et al. The term that they use—“casualty”—is outdated and has long been replaced by the term “accident and emergency medicine” or, increasingly, “emergency medicine.” It reflects ignorance of the role that trained specialists in emergency medicine have in the assessment of suspected chest pain.

Modern emergency departments, under the supervision of senior doctors trained in emergency medicine, use a wide variety of diagnostic tools not mentioned by Wood et al, including cardiac markers and continuous ST segment monitoring, to stratify …