The Pharmaceutical Journal
Vol 269 No 7223 p665
9 November 2002

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Cardiac risk similar for thioridazine and haloperidol

Overall, the risk of cardiac events in patients with schizophrenia treated with thioridazine is no worse than that for patients treated with haloperidol, a cohort study has shown. However, thioridazine may have a higher risk at high doses and so should be prescribed at the lowest dose needed to obtain an optimal therapeutic effect.

As well as comparing the cardiac risk of different antipsychotic drugs, researchers compared the frequency of cardiac events among patients with treated schizophrenia and control patients with psoriasis or glaucoma. They found that patients with treated schizophrenia had higher rates of cardiac events than controls (BMJ 2002;325:1070).