Psychiatry and clinical neurosciences
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Psychiatry Clin. Neurosci. · Feb 2005
Comparative StudyLorazepam and diazepam rapidly relieve catatonic signs in patients with schizophrenia.
The uses of lorazepam and electroconvulsive therapy (ECT) have been proven to be effective in treating catatonia. In the present study a modified treatment strategy (i.e. lorazepam i.m. injection or diazepam infused i.v. if lorazepam failed, not with ECT) was proposed to rapidly relieve catatonic signs in patients with schizophrenia. During a 3-year period, 14 patients with catatonic schizophrenia in Chinese ethnic background Taiwanese were brought to the emergency unit of a general hospital. ⋯ The response rate of catatonic signs in these 14 patients with lorazepam IMI during the first 2 h was 85.7% (12/14). However, according to the results of this method, the total response rate to benzodiazepines during 1 day was 100%(14/14). These results suggested that this modified treatment strategy could rapidly and completely relieve catatonic signs, even without the use of ECT.