Limiting antipsychotic drugs in dementia

Use of atypical antipsychotic drugs in patients with dementia.

Increasingly, atypical antipsychotic drugs are prescribed for elderly patients with symptoms of psychosis and behavioral disturbances. These symptoms often occur in patients with Alzheimer's disease, other dementias, or Parkinson's disease. As the average age of Americans increases, the prevalence of Alzheimer's disease and Parkinson's disease will rise accordingly. Although nonpharmacologic tr...

Review: atypical antipsychotic drugs increase risk for death in dementia.

M e t h o d s Data sources: MEDLINE (1966 to April 2005) and Cochrane Controlled Trials Register (Issue 1, 2005), conference abstracts and proceedings (from 1999), and pharmaceutical companies. Study selection and assessment: Published and unpublished randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled trials (RCTs) that evaluated mortality in older patients with dementia. Outcomes: Death during the s...

Review: atypical antipsychotic drugs modestly improve neuropsychiatric symptoms of dementia.

M e t h o d s Data sources: MEDLINE (1966 to July 2004), Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews, and reference lists of retrieved studies and reviews. Study selection and assessment: English-language, randomized, double-blind, placebocontrolled trials (RCTs) or meta-analyses of RCTs that evaluated any drug therapy in patients with dementia, including Alzheimer disease, vascular dementia, mixed...

Antipsychotic Drugs

The term psychosis refers to a variety of mental disorders characterized by one or more of the following symptoms: diminished and distorted capacity to process information and draw logical conclusions, hallucinations, delusions, incoherence or marked loosening of associations, catatonic or disorganized behavior, and aggression or violence. Antipsychotic drugs lessen these symptoms regardless of...

Antipsychotic drugs and hypothermia