Academic emergency medicine : official journal of the Society for Academic Emergency Medicine
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Approximately 55,000 patients per year in the United States are exposed to potentially rabid animals and receive rabies postexposure prophylaxis (PEP) and these patients commonly present to the emergency department (ED) for wound care and PEP. Despite the number of rabies exposures seen in EDs each year, there appears to be a knowledge gap among health care providers with regard to prescribing and administering rabies PEP. ⋯ In addition, this article will discuss dosing, administration, and schedule of the rabies vaccine and human rabies immune globulin to ensure patients are fully protected from developing rabies. Lastly, this article discusses the potential cost associated with rabies PEP and provides information on managing this barrier.