A multicenter retrospective study associated adjunct dexmedetomidine with longer ICU stay, while treatment selection left causal uncertainty.
The study included 438 patients from eight institutions with alcohol withdrawal as the primary ICU diagnosis. Those receiving benzodiazepines plus dexmedetomidine had more severe withdrawal scores at admission and longer unadjusted stays than those receiving benzodiazepines alone. After adjustment for selected covariates, the relative mean ICU stay remained higher, at 2.14.
The adjunct group was clinically different before treatment. Unmeasured severity, monitoring requirements, timing, and local practice could contribute to stay length. The estimate therefore should not be presented as proof that dexmedetomidine itself doubled hospitalization. It also does not establish that benzodiazepine-only care is best for every withdrawal patient. For an individual admission, examine severity and the reason an adjunct was selected, then distinguish symptom control from the separate resource-use endpoint measured here.
Original analysis of the supplied journal article, identified as PMC6829916.