Patterns of Prescription and Administration of Sedatives and Analgesics in the Intensive Care Unit
1996
To investigate the current usage of sedative and analgesic drugs in intensive care (ICU) and to study the pattern differences in usage of these drugs between the medical and surgical ICU, we retrospectively studied 229 consecutive ICU patients over a 3-month period. There were 114 medical and 115 surgical patients (162 men and 67 women; age 59±15 years). A total of 17 drugs were used, (range 0to8). On average, 2.1 and 1.5 (p<0.0l) drugs were used in each surgical and medical patient, respectively. Ninety-six percent of surgical and 67% of medical (p<0.00l) patients received analgesics or sedatives. Meperidine (81%), codeine (35%), and diazepam (20%) were the most frequently used in the surgical ICU, while oxazolam (33%), lorazepam (28%), and diazepam (25%) most frequently in the medical ICU. Intravenous administration was used more frequently in the surgical ICU, while oral administration was more common in the medical ICU (p<0.00l). In the medical ICU, drugs were more commonly ordered to be given according to a fixed schedule while as-needed orders were more frequent in the surgical ICU (p<0.0l). In conclusion, a wide variety of analgesic or sedative drugs are in current use in the ICU. Types of drugs, patterns of prescription and modes of administration differ between the surgical and medical ICU.
Keywords:
- Correction
- Source
- Cite
- Save
- Machine Reading By IdeaReader
0
References
0
Citations
NaN
KQI