ACUTE MEDICAMENTOUS TREATMENT OF MANIC IL LNESS IN INPATIENTS - EFFECTS OF INDEPENDENT VARIABLES ON DOSAGE OF NEUROLEPTICS AND DURATION OF STAY IN-HOSPITAL
L. Adler et al., ACUTE MEDICAMENTOUS TREATMENT OF MANIC IL LNESS IN INPATIENTS - EFFECTS OF INDEPENDENT VARIABLES ON DOSAGE OF NEUROLEPTICS AND DURATION OF STAY IN-HOSPITAL, Nervenarzt, 67(3), 1996, pp. 235-243
Investigations of drug therapy regimens in the treatment of acute mani
a are rare, selective, methodically problematic, and contradictory. Th
e goal of the present study is to describe the practice of mania treat
ment in a large unselected collective of patients for the first time,
and, following reduction of the data to global parameters such as leng
th of stay, neuroleptic daily and total doses, to determine sources of
variance and the strength of their effects by means of explorative da
ta analysis. In contrast to widely held opinions, neuroleptics are use
d as primary medication in all grades of severity of manic illness. Th
e daily dose comprises 496 +/- 379 mg of chlorpromazine (CPZ) equivale
nts; this result supports the first dose determination study and is at
odds with other studies with much higher dosages. The amount of mean
daily medication is only influenced by the severity of illness accordi
ng to variance analysis, the effect is moderately strong. Neuroleptics
appear to have causal effects, a property that has so far only been a
ttributed to prophylactic medication, which is given in 80 % of cases;
the different application forms have no effect on the neuroleptic dos
age, although they do affect the length of stay slightly. The mean len
gth of stay is 46.6 +/- 35.7 days and is slightly affected by age, sex
, severity of illness and compliance.