Combination of Antipsychoties

Overview

Analysing retrospectively records of patients hospitalised in an inpatient unit at the UniversityPsychiatric Department, Brno with schizophrenia and related disorders in 2000, we found that95/133 (71%) of all patients took atypical antipsychotics and 36/133 (27%) took a combination ofantipsychotics before admission. Almost all of them left the unit with antipsychotics treatment,the percentage of atypical antipsychotics did not change much (68%) nor the percentage of combinations (28%). The percentage agrees with published European studies. Risperidone was usedmost frequently before hospitalisation (55/95, i.e. 57%), on discharge the most frequent was olanzapine (56/125, i.e. 45%). Most frequent was on admission and discharge a combination of a typicaland an atypical antipsychotic (45%, 44% of the combinations). Combinations were prescribedmost frequently (39% of the patients with this diagnosis) to patients with schizoaffective disorder.On admission we did not find that any of the possible combinations was preferred, on dischargethe most frequent combination was olanzapine or clozapine and sulpiride (29% of all combinations).

Key words:
antipsychotics, schizoaffective disorder, clozapine, olanzapine, risperidone.