OBSERVATIONS ON THE COMPARATIVE EFFECTS OF TRANQUILIZERS ON PATIENTS PREVIOUSLY TREATED WITH PROCHLORPERAZINE
WERNER M. MENDEL M.D.1
1 Metropolitan State Hospital, Norwalk, Calif.
We have attempted to demonstrate a possible approach to the evaluation of drugs by using patients as their own control. This avoids the obvious error inherent in considering a diagnostic category as representing a uniform population group. We have attempted to be more precise in our observations of the patients by avoiding socially determined criteria, such as discharge from hospital, movement to open ward, etc. The study has further raised a number of interesting questions. We wonder whether in tranquilizers, as in some other medications, rapid-release of the drug from the tablet is perhaps more effective than a sustained, even release from the spansule. In this study the tablets were more effective milligram for milligram than the spansule. We raise the possibility of. using a number of phenothiazine derivatives in sequence in the treatment of disturbed psychotic patients. In our study-patients improved on a new phenothiazine derivative even though they had improved previously on prochlorperazine and had reached a very satisfactory plateau.
