ArticleCritical care explorations2023
Phenobarbital-Based Protocol for Alcohol Withdrawal Syndrome in a Medical ICU: Pre-Post Implementation Study.
Article in Critical care explorations, 2023. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 8 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
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Who cites it
8 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it, 13 citations in OpenAlex.
- Phenobarbital Versus Benzodiazepine-Based Pathways for Alcohol Withdrawal Syndrome in Critically Ill Adults: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis.Pharmacotherapy · 2026Pooled it
- Real-World Phenobarbital Use, Treatment Escalation, and Clinical Outcomes in Critically Ill Patients With Alcohol Withdrawal Syndrome: A Multicenter Propensity-Matched Cohort Study.Critical care explorations · 2026Observational
- Phenobarbital monotherapy vs benzodiazepines for alcohol withdrawal syndrome: a multicenter propensity-matched comparative effectiveness study.Internal and emergency medicine · 2026Article
- Hospital-Wide Implementation, Clinical Outcomes, and Safety of Phenobarbital for Alcohol Withdrawal.JAMA network open · 2025Article
- Trends in alcohol withdrawal management by medical toxicologists in the acute care setting: an analysis of the Toxicology Investigators Consortium (ToxIC) Core Registry, 2016-2022.Alcohol and alcoholism (Oxford, Oxfordshire) · 2025Article
- Phenobarbital Dosing for the Treatment of Alcohol Withdrawal Syndrome: A Review of the Literature.The Journal of pharmacy technology : jPT : official publication of the Association of Pharmacy Technicians · 2024Review
- Article
- Evaluation of phenobarbital dosing strategies for hospitalized patients with alcohol withdrawal syndrome.General hospital psychiatryArticle
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
8 authors at 1 institution in 1 country.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
We assessed the efficacy and safety of PB compared with benzodiazepine (BZD)-based protocols in treating AWS in MICU.
designSingle-center, pre-post protocol implementation study.
settingThe setting is a forty-bed MICU in a tertiary-level academic medical center. PATIENTS: We included all patients admitted to the MICU with a primary diagnosis of AWS.
interventionsIntravenous PB 260 mg followed by 130-mg doses every 15-30 minutes as needed up to 15 mg/kg of ideal body weight versus escalating doses of BZD, to achieve a Clinical Institute Withdrawal Assessment Alcohol Scale-Revised score less than 10. MEASUREMENTS AND MAIN
resultsICU and hospital length of stay (LOS), in addition to safety measures were the main outcomes of the study. A total of 102 patients were included, 51 in the PB arm and 51 in the BZD arm. There were no differences in baseline clinical characteristics. Half the patients in each group were admitted with delirium tremens. The use of PB-based protocol was associated with 35% reduction in median ICU LOS (1.5 d [interquartile range, 1.2-2.4 d] vs 2.3 d [1.4-4.8 d];
conclusionsA protocol utilizing rapidly escalating doses of PB over a short period is an effective and safe alternative to BZD in treating AWS in MICU.
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