Effectiveness of intravenous promethazine and diazepam in the treatment of peripheral vertigo in emergency department visits

Introduction: To improve our understanding of dizziness, its assessment, as well as its management to identify the appropriate treatment in order to reduce the costs and to increase the patients’ quality of life. Methods: A single blind parallel group randomized controlled trial was conducted on 164 participants with dizziness. One group received 25mg/ml promethazine and another received 5mg/ml diazepam. To assess the severity of dizziness, Visual Analog Scale was used prior to and two hours after treatment. Results: Both promethazine and diazepam had significant effects on decreasing the severity of dizziness, i.e. the severity score decreased from 9.31 to 1.81 in promethazine versus 9.33 to 4.50 in diazepam (P<0.001). Conclusion: A single IV dose of promethazine is more effective in reducing vertigo as compared with diazepam.