You have just finished seeing a 12-year-old boy who fell off the monkey bars about an hour ago. He has an obvious deformity to his right elbow and you suspect a displaced fracture that will require reduction. You would like to use procedural sedation to facilitate the reduction, but an empty granola bar wrapper stops you in your tracks. “We missed dinner rushing here and he couldn’t resist,” his mom says. Staring at …
Methoxyflurane- an alternative to opioid and NSAID analgesia in the Emergency Department?
Introduction Methoxyflurane, also known as Penthrox, is an inhaled analgesic that was first used in the early 1960s for general anaesthesia.1 While initially popular, reports of serious side effects including hepatotoxicity and irreversible dose-dependent nephrotoxicity led to its reduced usage as a general anesthetic by the 1970s.2 Nevertheless, due to its non-opioid nature and short half-life, methoxyflurane has found new life as a short acting analgesic for moderate to severe pain in several …