Psychotropic medications around perioperative period: How to go about?

Abstract

Background: Medical comorbidities are frequent in patients suffering from psychiatric disorders. Many of these patients would need emergency or elective surgeries in their lifetime. The perioperative period is a unique and critical phase, and thoughtful, informed management can prevent various medical misadventures in this period, thus improving the postoperative outcomes. Aim: This article attempts to provide an overview of the use of psychopharmacological agents during the perioperative period, the current recommendations about continuing or discontinuing various psychotropics in the perioperative period, and how to restart medications in the postsurgical period. Material and Methods: For this narrative review, literature search was done on PubMed and Google Scholar and relevant articles were identified and included. Results: For elective surgery, the psychiatrist should review the available investigation, severity of the physical illness, physical health status of the patient as per the American Society of Anaesthesiology (ASA) category, severity and stability of psychiatric disorder, comorbid substance use, and the ongoing psychotropics and their interactions with ongoing medications. In patients with ASA categories I and II, psychotropic medications can be continued. For patients with ASA categories V and VI, preferably psychotropics should be stopped. For patients belonging to ASA categories III and IV, antipsychotics except for clozapine can be continued; however, if feasible antidepressants and lithium should be stopped. For elective surgery, clozapine needs to be stopped 12 h before surgery, lithium 48–72 h before surgery, antidepressants to be tapered about 7–10 days before surgery, and monoamine oxidase inhibitors to be tapered and stopped 14 days before surgery. Other antipsychotics, mood stabilizers, and benzodiazepines can be continued till the day of surgery. When there is lack of time due to emergency surgery then a proper discussion with the primary team and the anesthetist need to be done about the possible risks. Conclusion: The psychiatrists handling patients in the perioperative period should have an idea about how psychotropics interact with different anesthetic agents and ensure that the anesthesiologist and the surgeon are made aware of the possible complications that might occur during the surgical and anesthetic procedure due to the concurrent use of specific psychotropics.