Due to a lack of controlled, prospective trials examining the pathophysiology and treatment of catatonia, current guidelines vary regarding how and when to best use antipsychotics in the presence of catatonia and what factors to consider in a thorough risk-benefit analysis. The literature is especially limited in describing the risks and benefits of using long-acting injectable antipsychotics in the presence of catatonia. We describe four cases where patients with preexisting catatonia received long-acting injectable first generation antipsychotics and experienced severe adverse effects (three experienced worsening of catatonia and one experienced neuroleptic malignant syndrome).
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground: Paraneoplastic syndromes are of interest to psycho-oncologists because they may be misdiagnosed initially as primary psychiatric disorders and can have profound neuropsychiatric and psychosocial sequelae. Paraneoplastic cerebellar degeneration (PCD) is a paraneoplastic syndrome which destroys Purkinje cells of the cerebellum and causes trunk and limb ataxia, dysarthria, diplopia, and vertigo, which often precede the diagnosis of cancer. Anti-Yo PCD is a devastating syndrome that significantly worsens prognosis in terms of functional ability and survival.
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