Affiliation:
1. Department of Psychiatry, Veterans Affairs Medical Center, Baylor College of Medicine, Houston, Texas.
Abstract
This study addresses the tolerability of divalproex sodium in elderly psychiatric inpatients with various Axis I diagnoses, using structured assessments. A chart review for a 7-month period on a geropsychiatry inpatient unit identified 13 patients who had been treated with divalproex sodium. All 13 patients received standardized ratings on the Cohen-Mansfield Agitation Inventory (CMAI), Brief Psychiatric Rating Scale (BPRS), Rating Scale for Side Effects (RSSE), and Mini-Mental State Examination (MMSE) on admission and discharge, which were compared using paired f-tests for 12 of the 13 patients. The thirteenth patient was withdrawn from valproate prior to discharge after developing a delirium thought to be secondary to a divalproex-phenytoin interaction. All of the remaining 12 patients tolerated divalproex sodium well with no significant change in MMSE scores ( P = .486), CMAI scores ( P = .0546), or RSSE scores ( P = .124). The change in BPRS score was found to be significant ( P = .004). Based on the present study and previously reported case series, divalproex sodium appears to be well tolerated in an elderly psychiatric population.
Subject
Psychiatry and Mental health,Geriatrics and Gerontology,Clinical Neurology
Cited by
33 articles.
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