• M Lazzarin, F Benati, and V Cesario.
• Divisione di Medicina Generale, Ospedale, Caprino (Verona), USSL 22, Regione Veneto.
• Recenti Prog Med. 1996 Sep 1; 87 (9): 422-4.

AbstractA case of rhabomyolysis with attendant severe acute renal failure, arisen in a 59-year-old male treated with haloperidol-decanoate, is presented. The patient has been affected by paranoia schizophrenia since childhood, and he was treated with electroshock and successively with neuroleptics p.o. Four years before our observation, a therapy with haloperidol decanoate (50 mg i.m. monthly) was started. After some time, catatonic like episodes appeared, which got more and more frequent, until they appeared weekly. In occasion of the last of them, he was admitted to our hospital. At the objective examination he presented psychomotory arrest, perspiration, mytacism, severe muscle rigidity, moderate oedems to lower limbs. Laboratory findings showed a pattern consistent with rabdomyolysis and severe renal failure. After that haloperidol decanoate was stopped and rehydration and intensive diuretic therapy was started, the clinical and laboratory pattern went normal, persisting however a light creatinine increase. Probably the rhabdomyolysis was induced by the haloperidol decanoate, and renal failure by secondary severe hyvolemia. This case comes into the so-called neuroleptic malignant syndrome which can rarely arise in patients treated with antipsycotic agents and which causes high mortality, particularly when there are rhabdomyolysis and acute renal failure.

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