Spontaneous epileptic seizures and electroencephalographic changes in the course of phenothiazine therapy

Publisher Website
Google Scholar
Abstract
During a 4 1/2 year period of observation, 1.2% of 859 nonepileptic patients receiving phenothiazines in a state hospital exhibited spontaneous epileptic seizures. The incidence was about 10% for those receiving large amounts of phenothiazines and less than 0.5% with low doses. Most of the convulsing patients were among those receiving chlorpromazine. There were no seizures among 669 patients in the control group. A study of 10 patients who exhibited seizures shows that such seizures occurred either within a few days after initiation of phenothiazine therapy or after sudden increases in a previous dose. Patients with organic brain disease are predisposed to a higher incidence of seizures and are prone to convulse with smaller doses as compared to nonorganic patients. Serial eeg recordings of the patients while on phenothiazines showed a tendency for slower frequencies and higher amplitudes compared to base-line records. Delta and theta activities were rather common. The abnormalities tended to clear within a range of a few days to 2 months after discontinuing phenothiazines. Similar ecg changes also occurred in patients receiving phenothiazines who did not exhibit any seizures. A review of the literature is presented.

This publication has 0 references indexed in Scilit: