Pain Self-Management with Inhaled Methoxyflurane by Emergency Department Trauma Patients: A Prospective, Interventional, Single-Center Study.

The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic has led to overcrowding in many emergency departments (EDs). The present single-center, prospective, interventional study (conducted at Bichat University Medical Center (Paris, France)) was designed to assess the impact of self-administered, inhaled, low-dose methoxyflurane on trauma pain in a pre-ED fast-track zone dedicated to the management of lower-acuity non-COVID-19 patients. In the first phase of the study, the control group consisted of patients with mild-to-moderate trauma pain, for whom the triage nurse initiated pain management (based on the World Health Organization (WHO)'s analgesic ladder). In the second phase, the intervention group consisted of similar patients who self-administered methoxyflurane as an adjuvant to the standard analgesic ladder. The primary endpoint was the numerical pain rating scale (NPRS) score (from 0 to 10) recorded at different time points during the patient's care (T0: arrival in the ED, T1: exit from the triage box, T2: in the radiology department, T3: clinical examination, and T4: discharge from the ED). The level of agreement between the NPRS and the WHO analgesic ladder was assessed by the calculation of Cohen's kappa. Pairwise comparisons of continuous variables were performed with Student's