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Lorazepam and diazepam rapidly relieve catatonic signs in patients with schizophrenia.

Huang TL

Department of Psychiatry, Chang Gung Memorial Hospital at Kaohsiung, Taiwan. a540520@adm.cgmh.org.tw

The uses of lorazepam and electroconvulsive therapy (ECT) have been proven to be effective in treating catatonia. In the present study a modified treatment strategy (i.e. lorazepam i.m. injection or diazepam infused i.v. if lorazepam failed, not with ECT) was proposed to rapidly relieve catatonic signs in patients with schizophrenia. During a 3-year period, 14 patients with catatonic schizophrenia in Chinese ethnic background Taiwanese were brought to the emergency unit of a general hospital. First, the patients were immediately treated with lorazepam 1 or 2 ampules (2 mg/mL per ampule) i.m. injection (IMI) during 2 h. Second, if the previous 2 ampules of lorazepam IMI failed, diazepam infused i.v. (10 mg/2 mL per ampule) in normal saline 500 mL every 8 h would be done during 1 day. The response rate of catatonic signs in these 14 patients with lorazepam IMI during the first 2 h was 85.7% (12/14). However, according to the results of this method, the total response rate to benzodiazepines during 1 day was 100%(14/14). These results suggested that this modified treatment strategy could rapidly and completely relieve catatonic signs, even without the use of ECT.

Published 31 January 2005 in Psychiatry Clin Neurosci, 59(1): 52-5.
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