Agitated patients are common in the prehospital environment and pose a significant danger to themselves, the public, law enforcement and prehospital medical providers. Pharmacologic and non-pharmacologic options exist for managing agitation in the prehospital setting. Severe agitation is best managed with pharmacologic methods, but the optimal drug or drug combination is unclear. Intramuscular (IM) ketamine has been shown to be very effective at obtaining fast and safe control of severely agitated patient. However, current research on this subject is limited to retrospective studies and case series. This proposal is a 2 year, single-center, double-blind randomized controlled trial which will measure the potential superiority of ketamine compared to a commonly used standard-of-care medication (IM haloperidol) for the rapid sedation of acutely agitated patients in the prehospital environment. It will be the first randomized, controlled, double blind study investigating the use of ketamine compared to haloperidol in the prehospital setting for agitation and will impact prehospital protocols for the treatment and management of agitation. It will potentially aid in the future reduction of harm to medical and law enforcement personnel by violent patients as well as decrease morbidity and mortality to the acutely agitated patients.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:bu.edu/oai:open.bu.edu:2144/42093 |
| Date | 20 February 2021 |
| Creators | Correll, David |
| Contributors | Weinstein, John, Broughton, Adam |
| Source Sets | Boston University |
| Language | en_US |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Thesis/Dissertation |
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