Past Issues

Objectives:This study was intended to investigate the prescribing patterns of antipsychotic drugs in hospitalized schizophrenia patients receiving antiparkinson drugs (APDs) at a psychiatric hospital in Taiwan from 2007 to 2011, and to analyze co-prescribing rates of APDs of each antipsychotic drug. Methods:We collected patients’ demographic data including information of admission year, age, gender, and length of hospital stay, and their drug-related information. Results:The five- year trend of long-term prescriptions of antipsychotic drugs showed that use of first- generation antipsychotic drugs (FGAs) was decreased, and the use of second-gener- ation antipsychotic drugs (SGAs) was increased. There were 38.7% of the patients receiving antipsychotic polypharmacy, and the rate was highest in those receiving a combination of FGAs and SGAs. Over the study period, the co-prescribing APDs was decreased by 15%. A longer hospital stay (p< 0.001) and using a higher than recommended dose of antipsychotic drugs (p< 0.001) were found to significantly increase a greater risk of co-prescribing APDs. Among the FGAs, haloperidol (p< 0.001) and trifluoperazine (p< 0.05) were found to be associated with a significantly higher risk of co-prescribing APDs; chlorpromazine (p< 0.001) and sulpiride (p< 0.001) were found to be associated with a significantly lower risk of co-prescribing APDs. Among the SGAs, amisulpride (p< 0.001), risperidone (p< 0.001), and zot- epine (p< 0.001) were associated with a significantly higher risk of co-prescribing APDs; clozapine (p< 0.001), olanzapine (p< 0.05), and quetiapine (p< 0.001) were associated with a significantly lower risk of co-prescribing APDs. Conclusion:The availability of SGAs had been increased in recent years. The SGAs are not a homog- enous group of antipsychotic drugs for the risk potential of extrapyramidal symp- toms (EPS). Having a considerably high rate of EPS possible associated with some SGAs warrants clinical attention.