Panic disorder is characterized by a progression of panic symptom severity with repeated attacks. Repeated panic episodes evoke heightened anticipatory anxiety, phobic avoidance and are typically associated with comorbid symptoms of depression. Due to the heterogeneity of the disorder, reliable neurochemical correlates attending panic have not been identified. However, variable neuropeptide int...

Panic attacks are common among patients who have undergone heart transplantation, but there are no clinical guidelines for the treatment of panic attacks in this group of patients. This report describes a 22-year-old woman who experienced panic attacks 10 years after heart transplant surgery. The attacks started after she discovered that the average post-transplantation survival is 10 years. Tr...

THROUGH THE DEVELOPMENT of epidemiologic studies we are able to say that 3.5% of the general population suffer from panic disorder1 with serious personal and social repercussions, such as depression, substance abuse, and suicidal tendencies.2 According to the DSM-IV,3 the essential feature of panic disorder (PD) is the occurrence of panic attacks. A panic attack is a sudden onset period of inte...

A bibliographic search has been performed in MEDLINE using cortisol and panic as key-words, occurring in the title and/or in the abstract. Human studies were selected, with no time limit. The following publications were excluded: review articles, case reports, panic attacks in disorders other than panic disorder, and studies on changes that occurred in-between panic attacks. The results showed ...

This article is part of a new initiative in Evidence-based Mental Health, namely the serialisation of chapters of Clinical Evidence (a summary of the best available evidence on common clinical interventions updated regularly by the BMJ Publishing Group). This article is based on material presented in: Kumar S, Oakley-Browne M. Panic disorder. Clinical Evidence 2002; 8: 1003–9. For this review, ...

BACKGROUND Because a large proportion of patients with panic attacks receiving approved pharmacotherapy do not respond or respond poorly to medication, it is important to identify additional therapeutic strategies for the management of panic symptoms. This article describes a randomized, rater-blind study comparing low-dose risperidone to standard-of-care paroxetine for the treatment of panic a...

OBJECTIVE The authors present a profile of panic disorder based on and generalized from the effects of acute and chronic hyperventilation that are characteristic of the respiratory panic disorder subtype. The review presented attempts to integrate three premises: hyperventilation is a physiological response to hypercapnia; hyperventilation can induce panic attacks; chronic hyperventilation is a...

It has been known for many years that acute attacks of anxiety can occur in the course of anxiety and depressive disorders. For example, in 1879 Maudsley described anxiety attacks in severe depressive disorders (Maudsley, 1879, p. 365) and in 1893 Hecker pointed out their association with the less severe forms of depression and anxiety known as neurasthenia. Hecker also described anxiety attack...