Effect of Rocuronium vs Succinylcholine on Endotracheal Intubation Success Rate Among Patients Undergoing Out-of-Hospital Rapid Sequence Intubation: A Randomized Clinical Trial

IMPORTANCE

Rocuronium and succinylcholine are often used for rapid sequence intubation, although the comparative efficacy of these paralytic agents for achieving successful intubation in an emergency setting has not been evaluated in clinical trials. Succinylcholine use has been associated with several adverse events not reported with rocuronium.

OBJECTIVE

To assess the noninferiority of rocuronium vs succinylcholine for tracheal intubation in out-of-hospital emergency situations.

DESIGN, SETTING AND PARTICIPANTS

Multicenter, single-blind, noninferiority randomized clinical trial comparing rocuronium (1.2 mg/kg) with succinylcholine (1 mg/kg) for rapid sequence intubation in 1248 adult patients needing out-of-hospital tracheal intubation. Enrollment occurred from January 2014 to August 2016 in 17 French out-of-hospital emergency medical units. The date of final follow-up was August 31, 2016.

INTERVENTIONS

Patients were randomly assigned to undergo tracheal intubation facilitated by rocuronium (n = 624) or succinylcholine (n = 624).

MAIN OUTCOMES AND MEASURES

The primary outcome was the intubation success rate on first attempt. A noninferiority margin of 7% was chosen. A per-protocol analysis was prespecified as the primary analysis.

RESULTS

Among 1248 patients who were randomized (mean age, 56 years; 501 [40.1%] women), 1230 (98.6%) completed the trial and 1226 (98.2%) were included in the per-protocol analysis. The number of patients with successful first-attempt intubation was 455 of 610 (74.6%) in the rocuronium group vs 489 of 616 (79.4%) in the succinylcholine group, with a between-group difference of -4.8% (1-sided 97.5% CI, -9% to ∞), which did not meet criteria for noninferiority. The most common intubation-related adverse events were hypoxemia (55 of 610 patients [9.0%]) and hypotension (39 of 610 patients [6.4%]) in the rocuronium group and hypoxemia (61 of 616 [9.9%]) and hypotension (62 of 616 patients [10.1%]) in the succinylcholine group.

CONCLUSIONS AND RELEVANCE

Among patients undergoing endotracheal intubation in an out-of-hospital emergency setting, rocuronium, compared with succinylcholine, failed to demonstrate noninferiority with regard to first-attempt intubation success rate.

TRIAL REGISTRATION

ClinicalTrials.gov Identifier: NCT02000674.

Syndromic Surveillance Based on Emergency Visits: A Reactive Tool for Unusual Events Detection

Objective

To show with examples that syndromic surveillance system can be a reactive tool for public health surveillance.

Introduction

The late health events such as the heat wave of 2003 showed the need to make public health surveillance evolve in France. Thus, the French Institute for Public Health Surveillance has developed syndromic surveillance systems based on several information sources such as emergency departments (1). In Reunion Island, the chikungunya outbreak of 2005–2006, then the influenza pandemic of 2009 contributed to the implementation and the development of this surveillance system (2–3). In the past years, this tool allowed to follow and measure the impact of seasonal epidemics. Nevertheless, its usefulness for the detection of minor unusual events had yet to be demonstrated.

Methods

In Reunion Island, the syndromic surveillance system is based on the activity of six emergency departments. Two types of indicators are constructed from collected data:

- Qualitative indicators for the alert (every visit whose diagnostic relates to a notifiable disease or potential epidemic disease);

- Quantitative indicators for the epidemic/cluster detection (number of visits based on syndromic grouping).

Daily and weekly analyses are carried out. A decision algorithm allows to validate the signal and to organize an epidemiological investigation if necessary.

Results

Each year, about 150 000 visits are registered in the six emergency departments that is 415 consultations per day on average. Several unusual health events on small-scale were detected early.

In August 2011, the surveillance system allowed to detect the first autochthonous cases of measles, a few days before this notifiable disease was reported to health authorities (Figure 1). In January 2012, the data of emergency departments allowed to validate the signal of viral meningitis as well as to detect a cluster in the West of the island and to follow its trend. In June 2012, a family foodborne illness was detected from a spatio-temporal cluster for abdominal pain by the surveillance system and was confirmed by epidemiological investigation (Figure 2).

Conclusions

Despite the improvement of exchanges with health practitioners and the development of specific surveillance systems, health surveillance remains fragile for the detection of clusters or unusual health events on small scale. The syndromic surveillance system based on emergency visits has proved to be relevant for the identification of signals leading to health alerts and requiring immediate control measures. In the future, it will be necessary to develop these systems (private practitioners, sentinel schools) in order to have several indicators depending on the degree of severity.