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Patients treated for acute headache with intranasal droperidol spend less time in the emergency department: A

Ari Stern¹, Andrew Munro¹, Chris King¹

¹Nelson Hospital, Nelson, New Zealand.

Emergency Medicine Australasia : EMA

|May 14, 2022

Abstract

Objective:

Headache is a common presenting complaint to the ED. Using time from the first provider to discharge as a surrogate for effectiveness, we aimed to determine if intranasal (IN) droperidol is as beneficial as usual treatment for acute headache in the ED.

Methods:

There were 1213 consecutive presentations of adults with acute headache over a 42-month period. Electronic records for each event were interrogated, 406 events met pre-determined exclusion criteria. Of the remaining 805 eligible patient events, 139 received IN droperidol, whereas 666 were given usual therapy.

Results:

There was a 20 min reduction of mean and median ED length of stay (LOS) for the group that got treated with IN droperidol.

Conclusions:

IN droperidol reduced LOS in the ED. There are potential cost savings of this effective treatment via this novel route. A prospective multi-centre study of the use of IN droperidol for the treatment of acute headache in the ED is recommended.

Keywords:

droperidol headache intranasal

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