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Saliva Alcohol Reagent Strips in Altered Response Protocols

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 June 2012

Keith G. Harpe ,
Donald M. Yealy ,
Michael B. Heller ,
Richard M. Kaplan  and
Fred W. Fochtman
Keith G. Harpe
Affiliation:
University of Pittsburgh Affiliated Residency in Emergency Medicine, Pittsburgh, Pa., USA
Donald M. Yealy*
Affiliation:
Division of Emergency Medicine, Department of Medicine, University of Pittsburgh and the Center for Emergency Medicine of Western Pennsylvania, Pittsburgh, Pa., USA
Michael B. Heller
Affiliation:
Division of Emergency Medicine, Department of Medicine, University of Pittsburgh and the Center for Emergency Medicine of Western Pennsylvania, Pittsburgh, Pa., USA
Richard M. Kaplan
Affiliation:
Division of Emergency Medicine, Department of Medicine, University of Pittsburgh and the Center for Emergency Medicine of Western Pennsylvania, Pittsburgh, Pa., USA
Fred W. Fochtman
Affiliation:
Duquesne University, Pittsburgh, Pa., USA
*
Darnall Army Community, Dept. of Emergency Medicine, Ft. Hood, TX 76544, USA
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Abstract

The prehospital care provider has been limited in his or her initial assessment of patients due to having available only a limited number of simple diagnostic tests. There has not been an accurate field test available to rule out significant ethanol intoxication. We designed a prospective trial for the prehospital setting to test the utility of a rapid, semi-quantitative, saliva alcohol reagent strip for patients with an altered level of consciousness. We found that these strips were useful in ruling out significant ethanol intoxication as a cause of an altered level of consciousness with a sensitivity of 85.7% and a specificity of 94.4%, but were not useful in accurately predicting the blood alcohol level. We conclude that these reagent strips are useful in the prehospital setting to provide information about patients with an altered level of consciousness.

Type
Original Research
Information
Prehospital and Disaster Medicine , Volume 5 , Issue 1 , March 1990 , pp. 41 - 44
Copyright
Copyright © World Association for Disaster and Emergency Medicine 1990

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Footnotes

Presented at the Scientific Assembly of the National Association of EMS Physicians, San Francisco, June 1989.

References

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