More Hospital Days Seen With Antipsychotic Use in Alzheimer Disease Alzheimer disease patients who initiate treatment with antipsychotic medications spend more days hospitalized than those who do not initiate antipsychotics. HealthDay News — Alzheimer disease patients who initiate treatment with antipsychotic medications spend more days hospitalized than those who do not initiate antipsychotics, according to a study recently published in the Journal of Post-Acute and Long-Term Care Medicine. Marjaana Koponen, PhD, of the Kuopio Research Center of Geriatric Care at the University of Eastern Finland, and colleagues used a nationwide exposure-matched cohort to identify 70,718 Finnish patients diagnosed with Alzheimer disease between 2005 and 2011. Patients who were started on antipsychotic medication were followed for two years. Related Articles Majority of Those Diagnosed With Dementia Do Not Receive Care From Specialist Aducanumab BLA to Be Submitted Following Positive Results in Early Alzheimer Trial Former Surgeons General Cite Dementia as Top Public Health Crisis The researchers found that patients who were started on antipsychotics accumulated 53 percent more hospital days than patients not using antipsychotics: an average of 52.5 days for antipsychotic initiators and 34.7 days for Alzheimer disease patients not being treated with antipsychotics. Compared with patients not on antipsychotic medications, patients in the antipsychotic treatment group were hospitalized under the diagnosis codes of several different conditions, including dementia; mental and behavioral disorders; circulatory system, respiratory, or genitourinary diseases; and certain infectious and parasitic diseases. “Antipsychotic initiators accumulated more hospital days than noninitiators, especially within the first six months after initiation. This may indicate adverse events or difficulties in treating the most severe behavioral and psychological symptoms of dementia and health problems triggering them,” the authors write. “After initiating antipsychotics, careful and regular monitoring is needed to assess response and decrease the risk of adverse effects and events.”
Wonder how that would fly with caregivers, knowing your loved one has a higher risk of hospitalization with an antipsychotic on board to treat agitation. My guess is not to well.
How about your dad is resisting any treatment and the assisted living home is calling you to tell you he has to leave, they can't continue his care at this level. He needs something to soothe his crankiness around 5pm He is "sundowning" you will be hoping he is presribed seroquel... begging for this.
You are an idiot who has clearly never been through this! Your loved one is out of control, acting wild, throwing things. The Alzheimer’s unit won’t take them like this and you can’t keep them at home. Yes..They use Seroquel and other atypicals trying to calm. Sometimes it works..sometimes it doesn’t. There is a risk. We all no that. You have NO CLUE.
Most reps don't have a clue. I sold Risperdal and launched Msintena and Trintellix left a year ago and my eyes were opened to the difficulties of keeping an agitated father in a nursing home. Nursing home regs differ state to state but because of elder abuse laws they send Pharm Ds around to get patients off of chemical restraints we call antipsychotics. Then the patients are ask to leave when they become a danger to staff and other patients. The families and patients suffer because of this nonsense, The other side of the fence is eye opening
