Version 1
: Received: 13 October 2023 / Approved: 16 October 2023 / Online: 16 October 2023 (10:33:52 CEST)
How to cite:
Arasu, R.; Das, S.; Thomas, N. Do Patients with Autism Spectrum Disorder Receive More Sedatives in the Emergency Department? A Case Matched Cohort Study. Preprints2023, 2023100961. https://doi.org/10.20944/preprints202310.0961.v1
Arasu, R.; Das, S.; Thomas, N. Do Patients with Autism Spectrum Disorder Receive More Sedatives in the Emergency Department? A Case Matched Cohort Study. Preprints 2023, 2023100961. https://doi.org/10.20944/preprints202310.0961.v1
Arasu, R.; Das, S.; Thomas, N. Do Patients with Autism Spectrum Disorder Receive More Sedatives in the Emergency Department? A Case Matched Cohort Study. Preprints2023, 2023100961. https://doi.org/10.20944/preprints202310.0961.v1
APA Style
Arasu, R., Das, S., & Thomas, N. (2023). Do Patients with Autism Spectrum Disorder Receive More Sedatives in the Emergency Department? A Case Matched Cohort Study. Preprints. https://doi.org/10.20944/preprints202310.0961.v1
Chicago/Turabian Style
Arasu, R., Soumitra Das and Naveen Thomas. 2023 "Do Patients with Autism Spectrum Disorder Receive More Sedatives in the Emergency Department? A Case Matched Cohort Study" Preprints. https://doi.org/10.20944/preprints202310.0961.v1
Abstract
Adult patients with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) exhibit a range of behaviours that can be disruptive to the medical care of themselves and other patients and as a result, are at higher risk of being sedated. The aim of the present study was to determine whether patients with ASD presenting to hospital for acute psychiatric crises re-ceive more sedative medications compared to similar patients without ASD. 43 adult patients with a previous di-agnosis of ASD who were referred to the mental health team at a single, large emergency department in metro-politan Victoria over the year of 2021 were identified and matched with an equal number of controls within the same cohort. Sedative medications were converted to diazepam and chlorpromazine equivalent doses and com-pared using repeated measures T-tests. Patients with ASD received 5.1mg more diazepam-equivalent benzodiaz-epines on average compared to matched controls (95%CI: 0.41-9.71). This difference was statistically significant (T=2.20, df=42, p=0.034). There was no significance difference in chlorpromazine-equivalent antipsychotic doses. Clinicians should be aware of the higher dose of sedatives, and consider other means of behavioural management in these patients.
Keywords
Autism spectrum disorder,; psychiatry; sedation; benzodiazepines; behavioural management; emergency medicine
Subject
Medicine and Pharmacology, Psychiatry and Mental Health
Copyright:
This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
