Schizophrenia is a severe mental disorder that is presented with different clinical phenotypes characterized by blunted emotion and distorted perception of reality. Medicines used for the treatment of schizophrenia are antipsychotics.
The purpose of the retrospective clinical research was to review and evaluate the adequacy of discharge pharmacotherapy of patients with a first episode of schizophrenia or similar psychosis who were hospitalized in the Idrija Psychiatric Hospital in 2022.
In the research, we found that only 55,4 % of people with antipsychotic treatment had prescribed discharged pharmacotherapy in accordance with the guidelines for the treatment of schizophrenia. We have noted that clozapine is often used to treat the treatment-non-resistant type of schizophrenia. Despite the fact that the guidelines do not specify the concomitant use of a depot and an oral form of the antipsychotic, we recorded this combination in 87,5 % of patients that received a depot form of an antipsychotic. ‘’As needed’’ pharmacotherapy was prescribed to 55,2 % of patients. Only to 37,8 % of these patients ‘’as needed’’ pharmacotherapy was correctly prescribed. The appropriateness of prescribed drugs acting on the central nervous system with the guidelines was found in 68,2 % of patients. We observed that only 16,5 % of all prescribed antipsychotics were prescribed in an appropriate dose according to the value of the defined daily dose of the antipsychotic. We did not encounter any abnormalities when examining the dosage of drugs in relation to renal function. In patients with elevated liver enzyme levels, great caution in dosing and determination of the degree of liver damage by the appropriate physician is required because of the increased risk of adverse reactions when taking drugs that affect the liver. We observed that the number of potential interactions increases with the number of simultaneously prescribed drugs. 86,6 % of patients with discharge pharmacotherapy had at least one potential interaction present, among them 40,3 % have type X interaction. Among all drugs, 8,7 % were prescribed for off – label use outside the official indication. To 37,3 % of patients at least one drug without an appropriate indication was prescribed, while at the same time we observed 11,9 % of patients with at least one non-treated indication.
In the future, it would be useful to pay more attention to the selection of appropriate pharmacotherapy, that complies with accordance to current guidelines, and to provide better traceability and organization of patients' medical documentation.
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