Utilisation of atypical antipsychotic drugs in institutionalised elderly persons and prevalence of metabolic alterations

Abstract

Objectives

Describe and evaluate the use of atypical antipsychotics on the institutionalized elderly population of the Valencian Community and prevalence of associated metabolic disorders.

Material and methods

Multicentre transversal descriptive study on drug use and case-control of the prevalence of disorders of glycaemia, cholesterol and triglycerides. The statistical analysis of metabolic disorders is performed on the difference in prevalence and its statistical significance between control and study groups.

Results

Six hundred eighty-one patients were included (study group: 344; control group: 337) from 20 social-health-care centres. 18.5% of the institutionalized patients are being treated with atypical antipsychotics. The most frequent diagnoses are: behavioural disorders associated with dementia (63.6%) and schizophrenia (18.4%). Risperidone is the most frequently used antipsychotic (66.0%). For all the drugs in general the doses used adjusted to those recommended for the elderly patients. The prevalence of disorders in glucose, cholesterol and triglyceride metabolism in the group under study is 23.96%, 34.83%, and 26.29%, respectively, with no statistically significant differences from the control group. The analysis by type of drug did not show significant differences.

Conclusions

The results obtained show that use of atypical antipsychotics in elderly patients complies with the established general recommendations. The doses used in elderly patients with behavioural disorders associated with dementia, mostly treated with risperidone, do not have a significant impact on the prevalence of metabolic disorders.