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Managing acute alcohol withdrawal in the emergency department (ED) consists primarily of administering benzodiazepines. But there is little evidence to help clinicians choose between the most used benzodiazepines, diazepam and lorazepam. In this retrospective study of almost 900 patients with acute alcohol withdrawal who were treated with benzodiazepines at three EDs in British Columbia, researchers assessed whether initial benzodiazepine choice resulted in different outcomes.
Five hundred patients initially received diazepam, and the remainder received lorazepam. Most outcomes were virtually identical in the two groups: hospital admissions (≈18%), intensive care unit admissions (≈0.3%), and 1-week return visits (≈24%). However, a higher pro…