Wong AH, Crispino L, Parker JB, et al. - Given the frequent presentation of agitated patients at emergency departments, researchers sought to determine the attributes and levels of agitation that influence thresholds for sedative and restraint use in this setting. In this secondary study, agitation characteristics were determined within a prospective observational study of agitated patients in the emergency department at an urban, tertiary referral center. Scores on three validated agitation scales—the Agitated Behavior Scale, the Overt Aggression Scale, and the Severity Scale— were recorded. During randomized 8-h blocks, they performed enrollment of patients who needed security presence or had scoring ≥ 1 on an agitation scale. They observed 95 agitation events on unique patients (median age: 42 years; 62.1% male). Alcohol/drug use (37.9%) and psychiatric complaint (23.2%) were the highest frequency triage chief complaints. Sedative or restraint use was reported in most events (73.7%). The primary etiology for agitation was the factor related to treatment course or interactions with staff (56.8%). There was an association of Overt Aggression Scale scores with significantly higher odds of sedative use, while Severity Scale scores had significantly higher odds of restraint use but significantly lower odds of sedative use. These findings suggest targeting external factors for behavioral techniques in agitation management.