Loading...
Pharmacologic restraint often is required when psychiatric patients with agitated or violent behavior present a danger to themselves or emergency department staff. Yet the optimal agent or agents remain controversial. In two separate, prospective, randomized, controlled trials, researchers compared sedation regimens for acutely agitated patients who presented to psychiatric EDs in Brazil and southern India.
In the Brazilian study, researchers randomized 316 patients to receive intramuscular haloperidol (5–10 mg) alone or with intramuscular promethazine (up to 50 mg, at the physician’s discretion). Among 311 patients with outcome data, more patients who received combination therapy than monotherapy were sedated after 20 minutes (72% vs. 55%),…