Prehospital Naloxone and Emergency Department Adverse Events: ADose-Dependent Relationship.

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to evaluate prehospital and emergency department (ED) interventions and outcomes of patients who received prehospital naloxone for a suspected opioid overdose. The primary objective was to evaluate if the individual dose, individual route, total dose, number of prehospital naloxone administrations, or occurrence of a prehospital adverse event (AE) were associated with the occurrence of AEs in the ED. Secondary objectives included a subset analysis of patients who received additional naloxone while in the ED, or were admitted to an intensive care or step-down unit (ICU). This was a retrospective, observational chart review of adult patients who received prehospital naloxone and were transported by ambulance to a suburban academic tertiary care center between 2014 and 2017. Descriptive, univariate, and multivariate statistics were used, with p<0.05 indicating significance. There were 513 patients included in the analysis, with a median age of 29years, and median total prehospital naloxone dose of 2mg. An increasing number of prehospital naloxone doses, an occurrence of a prehospital AE, and a route of administration other than intranasally for the first dose of prehospital naloxone were significantly associated with an increased likelihood of an ED AE. Patients who received < 2mg of prehospital naloxone had the least likelihood of being admitted to an ICU, whereas patients who received at least 6mg had a dramatically increased likelihood of ICU admission. Our results suggest that an increasing number of prehospital naloxone doses was significantly associated with an increased likelihood of an ED adverse event.