Plasma level monitoring for maintenance neuroleptic therapy.

Abstract

Schizophrenic patients differ markedly in the dose of neuroleptic that is necessary to treat their acute exacerbations of illness and to maintain their remissions once they have been adequately treated. Decisions about drug dosage during the maintenance phase are particularly problematic because the clinician is unable to assess a clinical response in individuals who are clinically stable. During this phase, the monitoring of plasma levels of neuroleptic drugs could provide an objective method of assessing a patient’s pharmacotherapy. Unfortunately, there have been very few studies of plasma level measurement in maintenance therapy. However, the available studies (Brown et al. 1982; Wistedt et al. 1982) suggest that patients with lower plasma levels are more vulnerable to relapse.KeywordsMaintenance TherapySchizophrenic PatientHaloperidol DecanoateDepot DrugFluphenazine DecanoateThese keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.