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Admission laboratory testing in elderly psychiatric patients without organic mental syndromes: Should it be routine?
Author(s) -
Harms Herman H.,
Hermans Peter
Publication year - 1994
Publication title -
international journal of geriatric psychiatry
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.28
H-Index - 129
eISSN - 1099-1166
pISSN - 0885-6230
DOI - 10.1002/gps.930090207
Subject(s) - urinalysis , dementia , medicine , psychiatry , intensive care medicine , urine , disease
The clinical benefit of and admission screening battery of laboratory tests, electrocardiogram, electroencephalogram and chest X‐ray was evaluated in a group of 227 elderly psychiatric patients without clinical evidence of dementia or other organic mental illness. Important contributions from the screening battery to clinical management were obtained only from measurement of blood glucose and thyroid function, and possibly also of red blood cell status, urinalysis and prostatic specific antigen. Given the very limited benefit of extensive screening batteries reported in the literature for psychiatric patients in general, and described in this study for elderly psychiatric patients without organic mental disorder, we suggest that such batteries should only be used in high(er) risk groups, which remain to be defined.