Polypharmacy in psychiatric practice in the Canary Islands

BMC Psychiatry

Emilio J Sanz²  Carlos De las Cuevas¹ 

[1] Professor of Psychiatry. Department of Psychiatry. School of Medicine. University of La Laguna. Tenerife. Canary Islands. Spain;Professor of Pharmacology. Department of Pharmacology. School of Medicine. University of La Laguna. Tenerife. Canary Islands. Spain

关键词: monotherapy.;    psychiatric patients;    psychotropic drugs;    polypharmacy;   

Others  :  1125129
DOI  :  10.1186/1471-244X-4-18

 received in 2004-01-30, accepted in 2004-07-05,  发布年份 2004

【 摘 要 】

Background

Polypharmacy with psychoactive drugs is an increasingly common and debatable contemporary practice in clinical psychiatry based more upon experience than evidence. The objective of this study was to evaluate the prevalence and conditioners of polypharmacy in psychiatric patients.

Method

A cross-sectional survey was carried out using the Canary Islands Health Service Clinical Records Database. A representative sample (n = 2,647) of patients with mental disorders receiving psychotropic medication was studied.

Results

The mean number of psychoactive drugs prescribed was 1.63 ± 0.93 (range 1–7). The rate of polypharmacy was 41.9%, with 27.8% of patients receiving two drugs, 9.1% receiving three, 3.2% receiving four, and 1.8% of the patients receiving five or more psychotropic drugs. Multiple regression analysis shows that variables sex and diagnosis have a predictive value with regard to the number of psychotropic drug used, being men and schizophrenic patients the most predisposed. Benzodiazepines were the more prevalent drugs in monotherapy, while anticonvulsants and antipsychotics were the more used in combination with other treatment. A questionable very high degree of same-class polypharmacy was evidenced, while multi-class, adjunctive and augmentation polypharmacy seem to be more appropriate.

Conclusions

Almost half of the psychiatric patients are treated with several psychotropics. Polypharmacy is common and seems to be problematic, especially when same class of drugs are prescribed together. Some diagnoses, such as schizophrenia, are associated with an increase risk of Polypharmacy but there is a lack of evidence based indicators that allows for quality evaluation on this practice.

【 授权许可】

   
2004 De las Cuevas and Sanz; licensee BioMed Central Ltd. This is an Open Access article: verbatim copying and redistribution of this article are permitted in all media for any purpose, provided this notice is preserved along with the article's original URL.

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