Inpharma 1374 - 15 Feb 2003

Long-term clozapine use reducescosts in schizophrenia

The long-term use of clozapine among patients withtreatment-resistant schizophrenia appears to be a"valuable treatment option for community practice", andgenerates "both continuing clinical benefit and a costbenefit", say researchers from Australia.

They conducted an open-label, retrospective patientrecord review to assess costs and outcomes in the 2years prior to, and the 5 years following, clozapineprescription among 32 patients with a clinical diagnosisof schizophrenia or schizoaffective disorder. The resultsshowed that patients’ clinical status improvedsignificantly between the pretreatment period and year3 of clozapine therapy. Moreover, there weresignificantly fewer hospital admissions in years 3, 4 and5 than in the pretreatment period. In addition, amongpatients who continued receiving clozapine for theduration of the study (n = 22), hospital bed costsdecreased significantly between the pretreatmentperiod and years 2, 3, 4 and 5. Treatment costs alsodecreased in year 5 for continuers, compared with thepretreatment period; a median annual cost difference of$A11 845* per patient was observed.* 1996–1997 Australian dollars

Drew LRH, et al. A five year follow-up study of the use of clozapine incommunity practice. Australian and New Zealand Journal of Psychiatry 36:780-786, Dec 2002 800930045

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Inpharma 15 Feb 2003 No. 13741173-8324/10/1374-0001/$14.95 Adis © 2010 Springer International Publishing AG. All rights reserved