Evaluation of factors related to overdose in patients with impaired consciousness who are transported by emergency medical services: an age-specific research

Association between Prescribing and Intoxication Rates for Selected Psychotropic Drugs: A Longitudinal Observational Study

Psychotropic prescription drugs are commonly involved in intoxication events. The study's aim was to determine a comparative risk for intoxication in relation to prescribing rates for individual drugs. This was a nationwide observational study in Slovenian adults between 2015 and 2021. Intoxication events with psychotropic drugs were collected from the National Register of intoxications. Dispensing data, expressed in defined daily doses, were provided by the Health Insurance Institute of Slovenia. Intoxication/prescribing ratio values were calculated. The correlation between trends in prescribing and intoxication rates was assessed using the Pearson correlation coefficient. In total, 2640 intoxication cases with psychotropic prescription drugs were registered. Anxiolytics and antipsychotics were the predominant groups. Midazolam, chlormethiazole, clonazepam, sulpiride, and quetiapine demonstrated the highest risk of intoxication, while all antidepressants had a risk several times lower. The best trend correlation was found for the prescribing period of 2 years before the intoxication events. An increase of 1,000,000 defined daily doses prescribed resulted in an increase of fifty intoxication events for antipsychotics, twenty events for antiepileptics, and five events for antidepressants. Intoxication/prescribing ratio calculation allowed for a quantitative comparison of the risk for intoxication in relation to the prescribing rates for psychotropic drugs, providing additional understanding of their toxicoepidemiology.

Creating and evaluating the score to assess overdose: the OD score

BACKGROUND

During disasters (including epidemics such as coronavirus disease 2019), the capacity of emergency departments is exceeded, thereby hindering the administration of appropriate lifesaving measures. Furthermore, the number of overdose patients increases because of the stress overload during emergency situation. The fact that overdose patients are forced to be transported to medical facilities that do not typically treat them is becoming worrisome. Moreover, there is no definitive score for overdose. This study aimed to create a patient-specific scoring system to assess overdose.

METHODS

This was a retrospective single-center study. The evidence-based OD score was evaluated on a scale of 0-15. Further, logistic analysis and receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curve analysis were performed to evaluate the score.

RESULTS

Overall, 262 patients (including 118 overdose patients) receiving care at the intensive care unit of Japan's Teikyo University Hospital in 2021 were targeted. Regarding the total OD score, ROC analysis revealed a cutoff of 8 (area under the curve [AUC]: 0.99, 95% confidence interval [CI]: 0.980-0.997, sensitivity: 0.95, specificity: 0.95, p < 0.05), which was considered to indicate an overdose. Of the items evaluated in the OD score, the scenario at the location of the patient's discovery (adjusted odds ratio [AOR]: 16.8, 95% CI: 5.0-255.9, p = 0.002) and recent experience of mental anxiety (AOR: 55.7, 95% CI: 2.8-5399.5, p = 0.03) significantly predicted an overdose in multivariable logistic regression analysis. External validation revealed that the OD score could also identify overdose in patients treated in a cohort from 2022 (average cutoff: 8.6, average AUC: 1.0, p < 0.0001).

CONCLUSIONS

The OD score could accurately assess overdose patients. Medical facilities that do not frequently address overdose patients will benefit from the use of this score.