Abstract
Objectives: We investigated the change in prescription patterns for bipolar disorders in our hospital during the latest five years. We also studied the difference in the prescription patterns between bipolar I (BD-I) and II (BD-II) disorders.
Methods: We used the prescription data of all the outpatients with bipolar disorders in the time period from 2010 to 2015 in our hospital.
Data were collected at two index dates for each year (April 1 and October 1).
Collected data: age, gender, prescribed mood stabilizers (MS), antipsychotics (AS) and/or antidepressants (AD) and their doses, and diagnosis.
This study was approved by the ethical committe board of Kusatsu Hospital.
Results: We identified 1971 patients (bipolarBD-I:53.1%, BD-II: 46.9%).
During the surveyed period, the proportion of the patients for whom any MS(s) was prescribed decreased from 88.2% to 84.4%. Similarly, the proportion changed from 25.2% to 52.1 % for AS(s), and from 29.9% to 27.8% for AD(s).
For the same period, MS monotherapy decreased from 51.2% to 31.6%, whereas combination therapy of MS(s) and AP(s) increased from 14.2% to 31.6％.
AP monotherapy also increased from 2.4% to 7.2％.
AD(s) and lamotrigine were significantly more frequently prescribed for the patients with BP-II than BP-I.
Conclusions: We found a significant change in the prescription pattern for bipolar disorders in our hospital over the last five years.
The treatment guidelines might have resulted in the more frequent prescription of antipsychotics, although it did not seem to affect the prescription of AD(s).
The result might suggest the need for differential strategies in the pharmacotherapy of BP-I and BP-II.