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I had the wonderful experience of arriving at work today to find, one of my patients, a 22 year old kid, showing the first signs of tardive dyskinesia. The cause? The haldol that I ordered for him on Friday. I was against it and wanted to give him some risperdal instead but apparantly cost is the prime issue and my better judgement was vetoed. I'm not going into psych and I'm not convinced that anything we're doing in phych hospitals is humane or reasonable, anyway. This kid was having a "psychotic break". If you ask me it was nothing that couldn't be dealt with by having someone listen to him for a while to find out how he got that way. Anyway, that's a whole nother issue. I'm more than a bit pissed that this kid is probably a lot worse off now than if he never found his way to medical care. This really isn't what I'm in medicine for.
Sure, psych patients are disenfranchised and don't tend to be top of most peoples worry list. But how many of you have ever had surgery. Post-op or ICU psychosis is far from being an unusual phenomenon. And we squirt that stuff into people - regular sane respectable people - in that situation, on a regular basis with very little consideration. As far as I can tell the 'rare' TD ain't so rare at all. In this place it's more of a 'sooner or later' phenomenon and it can kick in after just one dose.
So here's my question. Can someone explain to me what the political forces are that keep a drug like this on the market? Surely if we placed an outright ban on typicals the price of atypicals would fall. Am I just being naive? Really, what's the bigger picture on this? I for one am never gonna write an order for that crap again no matter who's twisting my arm.
Sure, psych patients are disenfranchised and don't tend to be top of most peoples worry list. But how many of you have ever had surgery. Post-op or ICU psychosis is far from being an unusual phenomenon. And we squirt that stuff into people - regular sane respectable people - in that situation, on a regular basis with very little consideration. As far as I can tell the 'rare' TD ain't so rare at all. In this place it's more of a 'sooner or later' phenomenon and it can kick in after just one dose.
So here's my question. Can someone explain to me what the political forces are that keep a drug like this on the market? Surely if we placed an outright ban on typicals the price of atypicals would fall. Am I just being naive? Really, what's the bigger picture on this? I for one am never gonna write an order for that crap again no matter who's twisting my arm.