Antipsychotic polypharmacy: evidence based or eminence based?

Focus on antipsychotic polypharmacy: evidence-based prescribing or prescribing-based evidence?

Clinicians treating patients with antipsychotic medications have long attempted to optimize outcomes in their patients by adapting evidence from clinical trials to clinical practice settings (Stahl, 1999a). However, there is little evidence to guide what to do when patients have poor responses. In such cases, many clinicians attempt innovative combinations of medicines. On the one hand, when su...

Antipsychotic Polypharmacy among Children and Young Adults in Office-Based or Hospital Outpatient Department Settings

The purpose of the study was three-fold: (1) to estimate the national trends in antipsychotic (AP) polypharmacy among 6- to 24-year-old patients in the U.S.; (2) to identify frequently used AP agents and mental disorder diagnoses related to AP polypharmacy; and (3) to assess the strength of association between AP polypharmacy and patient/provider characteristics. We used publicly available ambu...

levetiracetam (keppra): evidence-based polypharmacy in two patients with epilepsy

conclusions administration of aeds in general and levetiracetam in particular should be based on attention to pharmacokinetic behavior in terms of monotherapy or polypharmacy. case presentation two cases were studied, one patient was a 32-year-old male and the other was a 14-year-old female. the key words relevant to search topics were surveyed using pubmed (united states national library of me...

Shouldn't standard rheumatology clinical care be evidence-based rather than eminence-based, eloquence-based, or elegance-based?

Antipsychotic polypharmacy: squandering precious resources?

BRAINSTORMS is a monthly section of The Journal of Clinical Psychiatry aimed at providing updates of novel concepts emerging from the neurosciences that have relevance to the practicing psychiatrist. From the Neuroscience Education Institute in Carlsbad, Calif., and the Department of Psychiatry at the University of California San Diego. Reprint requests to: Stephen M. Stahl, M.D., Ph.D., Editor...