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Nausea is a common emergency department complaint that is difficult to quantify. Inability to measure its severity can be problematic when physicians are trying to determine whether a treatment is effective. Investigators evaluated whether a visual-analog scale (VAS) can be used to define the minimum degree of change in nausea that is clinically significant. They analyzed 83 paired VAS measurements from a convenience sample of 50 adults (mean age, 41; 58% female) with nausea.
Patients rated nausea on a 100-mm VAS (0=least severe, 100=most severe) every 15 minutes until they left the ED, reported a nausea score of zero, or had made four assessments. At each assessment after the first one, patients were also asked to describe whether their nau…