Intranasal Delivery of Medications for the Treatment of Neurologic Conditions: A Pharmacology Update.
Patricia Osborne Shafer, Patricia Dean, Lai Brooks and 3 others
PMID 38976832WHAT IT FOUND
Approved intranasal rescue therapies for opioid overdose, migraine, and seizure clusters are designed for quick use by nonmedical personnel.
Nurses can teach patients and caregivers how to give them, what to watch for, and when to call emergency care.
Key findings
01In a cited naloxone device study, successful administration was 67% with a single-dose intranasal device, 52% with an intramuscular autoinjector, and 3% with a mucosal atomization device.
02In a cited migraine study, 56.3% of patients reported no functional disability 2 hours after intranasal sumatriptan, compared with 28.2% of patients receiving placebo.
03Nurses can monitor adverse events and symptom cessation, teach care partners first aid and when to call emergency help, and consider reevaluation if rescue therapy is used frequently.
STILL TO COME
How it was doneWhat they foundWhat it means for RNs
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What it does not show
This is a narrative review, not a new trial, so it does not directly test whether these therapies improve outcomes. The article is funded by a company that sells rescue therapy products, and several authors have financial ties to that company and others. The cited ease-of-use and function results come from separate studies with different devices, outcomes, and settings, so they cannot be directly compared. The review does not describe a systematic search method or how many studies were included.
Declared interests
Neurelis funded this article. The authors report consulting, speaker, advisory board, employment, stock option, grant, and contract relationships with Neurelis and other pharmaceutical companies.
The easy way to misread this
Do not read this as independent proof that intranasal rescue therapies are better than other routes for all neurologic conditions. It is an industry-funded narrative review, not a trial, and the cited studies used different devices, outcomes, and settings.