Forty-Two Months Experience of Flupenthixol Decanoate in the Maintenance Treatment of Schizophrenia

Summary

Further experience with maintenance depot treatment of 199 schizophrenic patients over a 42-month period has confirmed an earlier report by the same investigators of the effectiveness of flupenthixol decanoate as an antipsychotic agent and its value in maintaining schizophrenics in the community. Ten percent of patients required re-admission to hospital for treatment of psychotic relapse during this 3\-year period. Over the whole period only 28% of patients showed extrapyramidal side-effects, in most cases trivial in degree, so that the routine prophylactic prescribing of anti-parkinsonism drugs with flupenthixol decanoate would appear to be unjustified. Depression was noted in 15 % of patients (10 % severe; 5 % moderate), an incidence which, though no higher than that encountered in fluphenazine-treated patients, was disappointingly high for a drug used, in lower dosage, specifically for the treatment of neurotic depression. Other side-effects noted were transient hypomania and anergia, each in 7% of the group. There was no unequivocal evidence of toxicity. The mean dose required by the first 78 patients (31.97 to 33.46?mg./3 weeks) did not vary very significantly over a 2-year treatment period.