Clinical practice with antidementia and antipsychotic drugs: Audit from a geriatric clinic in India.
BACKGROUND
Dementia is one of the most disabling disorders afflicting the elderly, with a staggering emotional and economic impact. Antidementia agents have been used for delaying cognitive decline. Antipsychotics are commonly prescribed for behavioral symptoms associated with dementia.


OBJECTIVE
To explore the use of anti-dementing agents and antipsychotics used in patients with a diagnosis of dementia Materials and Methods: A retrospective chart review method; geriatric clinic of tertiary care setting.


RESULTS
The study sample included 51 consecutive patients with a diagnosis of dementia. The commonest subtype of dementia that was diagnosed was Alzheimer's disease (45%), followed by Frontotemporal dementia (25%).The commonest antidementia drug that was used was donepezil, which alone was prescribed in 27 patients (52%). The commonest antipsychotic used was quetiapine, which was used in 24 patients (47%).


CONCLUSIONS
The study found donepezil to be the most commonly prescribed antidementia drug and quetiapine to be the most commonly used antipsychotic in a tertiary care geriatric clinic, in a developing country. There is a need to study the cost-effectiveness of antidementia and antipsychotic drugs in patients with dementia, in developing countries.
Prasad
Krishna
K
Department of Psychiatry, Institute of Human Behaviour & Allied Sciences, Delhi - 110 095, India.
Gupta
Himanshu
H
Bharath
Srikala
S
Prakash
Om
O
Sivakumar
P T
PT
Kumar
C Naveen
CN
Varghese
Mathew
M