(HealthDay)—Alzheimer disease patients who initiate treatment with antipsychotic medications spend more days hospitalized than those who do not initiate antipsychotics, according to a study recently published in the Journal of Post-Acute and Long-Term Care Medicine.
Marjaana Koponen, Ph.D., of the Kuopio Research Center of Geriatric Care at the University of Eastern Finland, and colleagues used a nationwide exposure-matched cohort to identify 70,718 Finnish patients diagnosed with Alzheimer disease between 2005 and 2011. Patients who were started on antipsychotic medication were followed for two years.
The researchers found that patients who were started on antipsychotics accumulated 53 percent more hospital days than patients…
