Hello. This is Dr. Scott Irwin, Chief of Psychiatry and Psychosocial Services at San Diego Hospice and The Institute for Palliative Medicine. Today I’d like to talk to you about what I call an “agitation code.” Agitation is highly distressing for patients, families, and staff members. We want to get it under control quickly. In the setting of reversible delirium, antipsychotics are the gold standard. I’d like to talk today about using antipsychotics to get agitation under control quickly.

The number of children and teens taking antipsychotic medications has skyrocketed in recent years, with psychiatrists prescribing the drugs in nearly one-in-three visits with youth, a new study found. The drugs are not only being prescribed for schizophrenia and bipolar disorder, but also for the commonly diagnosed attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). Many mental health experts say that the powerful medications come with serious potential side effects and that their effectiveness has not been proven in treating the disorders for which they’re increasingly prescribed.

    August 15, 2011 – What does extreme heat do to medications? I found out while we were sweating out the recent heat wave in a lake cabin in New Hampshire and my 10-year-old son’s allergieskicked up. I gave him a dose of over-the-counter medicine that usually brings quick relief. But this time the drug had no effect. The same thing happened the next day, and the next. When I returned home, I asked a pharmacist about it. Was my son becoming immune to this particular medicine? Were his allergies getting worse? The pharmacist asked where I had stored his pills as the temperatures soared. On the bathroom shelf in…

Many of the study participants are genetically prone to the disease       Researchers are preparing to test an experimental drug in people genetically primed to develop Alzheimer’s disease. The best-scenario hope is that the drug will lead to a way of preventing the progressive brain-wasting disease, and to a better understanding of its destructive processes, U.S. officials announced Tuesday. The study volunteers will include some Americans as well as 300 members of an extended Colombian family — some only 30 years old — thought to have more relatives with Alzheimer’s than any family in the world, The New York Times reported.

Published: March 28, 2012 The FDA has reworded warnings about potentially fatal arrhythmias associated with the antidepressant drug citalopram (Celexa), acknowledging that some patients may need the drug despite the risks. Last August, the agency ordered numerous changes to the drug’s label, including one stating that citalopram is contraindicated in patients with congenital long QT syndrome.

Maternal use of selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors during late pregnancy raised risk for neonatal pulmonary hypertension, but individual risk-benefit profiles should be evaluated. Depression during pregnancy is common, and women with this condition are often treated with selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs). Fetal risks associated with SSRI exposure have not been elucidated completely, and studies aimed at exploring risk for persistent pulmonary hypertension of the newborn (PPHN) have yielded conflicting results. Now, researchers have used birth, death, and prescription registries from 1996 to 2007 in all five Nordic countries to assess this relation in a population-based cohort study.