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The effectiveness of long‐acting injectable antipsychotics versus oral antipsychotics in the maintenance treatment of outpatients with chronic schizophrenia
Author(s) -
Fang SuChen,
Liao DingLieh,
Huang ChengYi,
Hsu ChunChi,
Cheng ShuLi,
Shao YuHsuan J.
Publication year - 2020
Publication title -
human psychopharmacology: clinical and experimental
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.461
H-Index - 78
eISSN - 1099-1077
pISSN - 0885-6222
DOI - 10.1002/hup.2729
Subject(s) - medicine , schizophrenia (object oriented programming) , odds ratio , cohort , logistic regression , psychiatry , antipsychotic , pediatrics , emergency medicine
Objective To compare the psychiatric service utilization between patients who only received long‐acting injectable antipsychotics (LAIAs) and those who only received oral antipsychotics (OAPs) in the maintenance treatment of chronic schizophrenia. Methods We constructed a cohort of chronic schizophrenia patients who underwent maintenance treatment from the Taiwan National Health Insurance Research Database in 2011 and followed these patients for 12 months. We included patients who had been diagnosed with schizophrenia for at least 3 years, were not hospitalized in 2011, and had received 1 year of maintenance treatment. Inverse probability of treatment weighting logistic, linear, and negative binomial regression models were used to estimate associated psychiatric services utilization and adjust for covariate imbalances between the LAIAs and OAPs groups. Results Among 40,194 patients, 948 (2.36%) received only LAIAs and 39,246 (97.64%) received only OAPs. Compared with those who received only OAPs, the sole LAIAs users were associated with a lower percentage of psychiatric hospitalization (8.4% and 5.8%, respectively; odds ratio: 0.63, p < .01), shorter lengths of hospitalization days (82.8 and 65.9, respectively; coefficient [b]: −16.87, p = .03), and fewer emergency room visits (2.3 and 1.8, respectively; b: −0.24, p < .01) per patient. Conclusions Chronic schizophrenia patients who received only LAIs had a lower risk of disease relapse and a reduction in psychiatric service utilization than those receiving only OAPs.