| dc.description.abstract | Background: Lithium is an antimanic drug that has been used for the first-line
therapy of bipolar disorder, and it also could be used to treat other mental disorder
as a mood stabilizer, where treatment with other drugs has not worked. This drug
has a narrow therapeutic index so it potentially causes subtherapeutic or drug
toxicity. Lithium is often combined with other drugs so that it is possible to cause
drug interactions. Therefore, an evaluation of lithium use is needed.
Objective: To evaluate the suitability of lithium use, as well as knowing the
combination use and possibility of drug interactions occurring in patients that
received lithium therapy.
Method: This is non-experimental research with a cross-sectional design. This
study includes all outpatients receiving lithium therapy at RSJ Prof. Dr. Soerojo,
Magelang. This research was conducted using retrospective method with secondary
data obtained from medical records of RSJ Prof. Dr. Soerojo Magelang within 2022.
The data was analyzed using both univariate and bivariate analysis. The possibility
of interactions were analyzed theoritically based on the literature. The study
involves 236 patients that included as inclusion criteria.
Results: Within 2022, there was 236 patients who met the inclusion criteria, 42.7%
were diagnosed with schizophrenia, 31.6% were diagnosed with schizoaffective
disorder, and 16.2% with bipolar disorder. The doses received by patients with
bipolar disorder were in accordance with the literature, which are 200 mg to 800
mg per day. The most often drug combined with lithium was clozapine (37.38%),
and the most likely interactions that could occur is interactions between lithium and
clozapine (43%) with major severity.
Conclusions: Patients with bipolar disorder have received lithium with appropriate
diagnosis mentioned in literature. The combination of lithium with clozapine and
other drugs is also appropriate and is indeed recommended for certain mental
disorders. The most likely interaction that could happen is the major-level
interaction between lithium and clozapine. | en_US |
