Impact of iodinated contrast allergies on emergency department operations

Copyright © 2022 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved..

OBJECTIVES: Adverse reactions to intravenous (IV) iodinated contrast media are classified by the American College of Radiology (ACR) Manual on Contrast Media as either allergic-like (ALR) or physiologic (PR). Premedication may be beneficial for patients who have prior documented mild or moderate ALR. We sought to perform a retrospective analysis of patients who received computed tomography (CT) imaging in our emergency department (ED) to establish whether listing of an iodinated contrast media allergy results in a delay in care, increases the use of non-contrast studies, and to quantify the incidence of listing iodinated contrast allergies which do not necessitate premedication.

METHODS: We performed a retrospective analysis of CT scans performed in our academic medical center ED during a 6-month period. There were 12,737 unique patients of whom 454 patients had a listed iodinated contrast allergy. Of these, 106 received IV contrast and were categorized as to whether premedication was necessary. Descriptive statistics were used to evaluate patient demographics, clinical characteristics, and operational outcomes. A multivariate linear regression model was used to predict time from order to start (OTS time) of CT imaging while controlling for co-variates.

RESULTS: Non-allergic patients underwent contrast-enhanced CT imaging at a significantly higher rate than allergic patients (45.9% vs. 23.3%, p < 0.01). The OTS time for allergic patients who underwent contrast-enhanced CT imaging was 360 min and significantly longer than the OTS time for non-allergic patients who underwent contrast-enhanced CT imaging (118 min, p < 0.001). Of the 106 allergic patients who underwent contrast-enhanced CT imaging, 27 (25.5%) did not meet ACR criteria for necessitating premedication. The average OTS time for these 27 patients was 296 min, significantly longer than the OTS for non-allergic patients (118 min, p < 0.01) and did not differ from the OTS time for the 79 patients who did meet premedication criteria (382 min, p = 0.23). A multivariate linear regression showed that OTS time was significantly longer if a contrast allergy was present (p < 0.001).

CONCLUSION: A chart-documented iodinated contrast allergy resulted in a significant increase in time to obtain a contrast-enhanced CT study. This delay persisted among patients who did not meet ACR criteria for premedication. Appropriately deferring premedication could potentially reduce the ED length-of-stay by over 4 h for these patients.

Medienart:

E-Artikel

Erscheinungsjahr:

2022

Erschienen:

2022

Enthalten in:

Zur Gesamtaufnahme - volume:61

Enthalten in:

The American journal of emergency medicine - 61(2022) vom: 01. Nov., Seite 127-130

Sprache:

Englisch

Beteiligte Personen:

Berlyand, Yosef [VerfasserIn]
Fraga, John Anthony [VerfasserIn]
Succi, Marc D [VerfasserIn]
Yun, Brian J [VerfasserIn]
Lee, Andy Hung-Yi [VerfasserIn]
Baugh, Joshua J [VerfasserIn]
Whitehead, David [VerfasserIn]
Raja, Ali S [VerfasserIn]
Prabhakar, Anand M [VerfasserIn]

Links:

Volltext

Themen:

Contrast Media
Contrast allergies
Emergency department operations
Emergency radiology
Iodinated contrast
Journal Article

Anmerkungen:

Date Completed 30.03.2023

Date Revised 30.03.2023

published: Print-Electronic

Citation Status MEDLINE

doi:

10.1016/j.ajem.2022.08.052

funding:

Förderinstitution / Projekttitel:

PPN (Katalog-ID):

NLM346129435