RESEARCH ARTICLE
Repeated Intranasal Flumazenil Administration in Adult Subjects During Prolonged Benzodiazepine-induced Sedation
Trevor J. Szymanski1, Michael D. Curley2, Mirjana M. Lovrincevic3, Beverly K. Philip1, Juli Wyle-gala4, Massimo Ferrigno1, *
Article Information
Identifiers and Pagination:
Year: 2013Volume: 7
First Page: 1
Last Page: 4
Publisher ID: TOATJ-7-1
DOI: 10.2174/1874321801307010001
Article History:
Received Date: 06/10/2012Revision Received Date: 20/12/2012
Acceptance Date: 27/12/2012
Electronic publication date: 1/2/2013
Collection year: 2013
open-access license: This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International Public License (CC-BY 4.0), a copy of which is available at: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/legalcode. This license permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
Abstract
As part of a study exploring the use of oral diazepam to reduce carbon dioxide production and extend survival in a disabled submarine, intranasal flumazenil was used repeatedly over 48 hours to intermittently reverse benzodiazepine-induced sedation in six adult male subjects. Previous reports of intranasal flumazenil have been limited to pediatric pa-tients. Here we report the time course of administration of intranasal flumazenil and its effects on adult subjects, in whom flumazenil was given during sedation/reversal/re-sedation cycles. Sedation scores increased with flumazenil administra-tion in 24 of the 30 cycles, and in 100% of cases when subjects were at deeper levels of sedation.