Haloperidol prescribing practices in the general hospital

Use of neuroleptics in a general hospital

“…Neuroleptic drugs are commonly prescribed to treat agitation or delirious states in acutely ill hospitalised patients [1,3]. In our cohort, patients who received neuroleptic drugs were often elderly, seriously ill, stayed in the hospital longer and had a higher mortality rate during hospitalisation and three months later than patients who did not.…”

“…There have been few controlled trials about the most commonly used drugs to guide therapy in delirium and agitated patients [1-3,11,14,16-18]. To successfully treat these conditions, an adequate description of behavioural target symptoms to be corrected and a thorough investigation to identify precipitating causes are essential.…”

“…Neuroleptic drugs are commonly prescribed in acutely ill-hospitalised patients [1-3]. However, the use of such medication has not been extensively studied.…”

“…Treatments for agitation are imperfect, and clinicians should be prepared to work through several in order to find the most suitable for a given patient and clinical situation. [16] Ideally the use of pharmacological interventions should be reserved for situations where other measures have been unsuccessful, [12,16] however between 9.4 and 42.8% of non-psychiatric patients were prescribed psychoactive medications during hospitalisation, most of them because of agitation or delirium [1,3]. Efficacy, side effects, adverse experiences and strategies of drug selection based on the patient's diagnosis have not been frequently studied.…”

“What’s in a Name?” Delirium by Any Other Name Would Be as Deadly. A Review of the Nature of Delirium Consultations

“…Wise et al have commented on haloperidol being prescribed to treat agitation in general hospital settings with poor documentation of organic mental syndromes and mental status examination. 14 We did not include consultations for altered mental status within the concordant group. This may initially appear to be a matter of semantics, but, in light of our findings, it suggests nonreification of individual symptoms into a syndrome.…”