A Naturalistic Study of Risperidone Treatment in Affiliated University Hospitals: Focus on Clinical Characteristics / 신경정신의학

ABSTRACT

OBJECTIVE: This retrospective naturalistic study was designed to compare the clinical characteristics including psychopathology of two groups of patients, long-term maintenance group and short-term drop-out group, who were taking risperidone. METHOD: Datas were collected for 210 schizophrenic patients with complete medical records among 580 patients who were enrolled with risperidone administration from January 1996 to December 1996 in 8 affiliated hospital of the Catholic University. The short-term drop-out patients group were assigned to whom treatment period was less than 6 month, and the long-term maintained patients group, treatment period was more than 2 years. We assessed demographics, psychopathology, and other variables related with medication based on past medical records. RESULTS: Among subjects of 210, short-term drop-out patients group were 67(31.9%) and long-term maintained patients group were 143(68.1%). Demographics and psychopathology were not significantly different between two groups. The starting and maximal dosage of risperidone was not significantly different between two groups but the maintenance dosage of risperidone was lower in long-term medicated patients group than short-term drop-out patients group(t=3.698, p<0.05). Additionally, the result of this study showed differences in experiences of past antipsychotic use as following. The number of no previous use of antipsychotic was 39(58.2%), the number of high potency antipsychotic use was 27(40.3%), and the number of low potency antipsychotic use was 1(1.5%) in short-term drop-out group. The number of no previous use of antipsychotic was 58(40.6%), the number of high potency antipsychotic use was 77(53.8%), the number of low potency antipsychotic use was 8(5.6%) in long-term maintained group(X 2=6.559, df=2, p<0.05). CONCLUSION: According to these results, administration of low therapeutic dosage should be recommended for long-term maintenance as if possible. Multi-center based retrospective naturalistic study like this would be useful for getting informations about efficacy and some other aspects of antipsychotic administration in practical field.