Implementation of a Symptom–Triggered Protocol for Severe Alcohol Withdrawal Treatment in a Medical Step-down Unit

Abstract

Management of severe alcohol withdrawal and delirium tremens (DT) is challenging and requires significant resources, including close monitoring and intensive treatment, frequently in an intensive care unit (ICU).1 Early diagnosis and therapeutic intervention are important to limit potential complications associated with DT.2 Benzodiazepines are first-line therapeutic agents, but the definition of optimal use and dosing regimens has been limited, due to a lack of randomized controlled trials. In lower acuity patients admitted to a detoxification unit, systematic symptom–triggered benzodiazepine therapy (STT) has been established to be more effective than fixed-schedule (FS) dosing.3-5 Patients treated using STT require lower total benzodiazepine dosing and achieve shorter treatment durations. However, in higheracuity patients admitted to general medical services, analyses have not shown an advantage of STT over combined FS and STT.6 Methods The purpose of this study was to determine whether implementation of STT is more effective than FS dosing combined with episodic STT in the management of hospitalized high-acuity alcohol withdrawal patients. We conducted a preintervention and postintervention quasi-experimental study in the step-down unit (SDU) of a 305-bed community teaching hospital. The study population consisted of adult inpatients 18 years or older admitted or transferred to the 12-bed SDU with alcohol withdrawal, as defined by primary or secondary International Classification of Diseases, Tenth Revision diagnoses. SDU admission criteria included patients with prior DT or those who had received multiple doses of benzodiazepines in the emergency department. In-hospital transfer to the SDU was at the physician’s discretion, if the patient required esca-