ADMISSION LABORATORY TESTING IN ELDERLY PSYCHIATRIC-PATIENTS WITHOUT ORGANIC MENTAL SYNDROMES - SHOULD IT BE ROUTINE

The clinical benefit of an admission screening battery of laboratory t ests, electrocardiogram, electroencephalogram and chest X-ray was eval uated in a group of 227 elderly psychiatric patients without clinical evidence of dementia or other organic mental illness. Important contri butions from the screening battery to clinical management were obtaine d only from measurement of blood glucose and thyroid function, and pos sibly also of red blood cell status, urinalysis and prostatic specific antigen. Given the very limited benefit of extensive screening batter ies reported in the literature for psychiatric patients in general, an d described in this study for elderly psychiatric patients without org anic mental disorder, we suggest that such batteries should only be us ed in high(er) risk groups, which remain to be defined.