Consult Rounds: High Dose IV Insulin and new avenues of treatment..

Traditional therapies for beta-blockers or calcium channel blocker toxicity are:
Glucagon, Calcium, Atropine and Vasopressors.

What I learned is that now high-dose insulin therapy has emerged as a preferred treatment of cardiogenic shock induced by calcium channel blockers or beta blockers. When used at doses 10 times that of the normal antidiabetic dose, insulin has positive inotropic effects even in the presence of beta-blocker or calcium channel blocker toxicity. What insulin dose at these high doses is improve hemodynamic stability and improve response to pressors. This takes almost 30 min to take effect.

There is a toxicology guidelines for this listed below: Consensus recommendations for the management of calcium channel blocker poisoning in adults. There is a  linear dose-response curve where increasing doses of insulin produce increasing positive hemodynamic effects. Goals for treatment can be a heart rate of at least 50 beats per minute and a systolic blood pressure of at least 100 mmHg. Obviously, one has to give dextrose to combat the severe hypoglycemia that might result of this and monitor K and phos levels s well.

Interestingly, this is being used commonly in beta blocker toxicity as well. In one large study looking at using high dose insulin in beta blocker and CCB toxicity, median insulin bolus was 1U/kg and peak infusion was 8 Units/kg/h.  Interestingly and expectedly, hypokalemia occurred in close to 30% of patients and hypoglycemia in 30% of patients.

 This is an interesting concept and a creative use of a common agent.