Gnanavel S, Hussain S. Audit of physical health monitoring in children and adolescents receiving antipsychotics in neurodevelopmental clinics in Northumberland. World J Psychiatr 2018; 8(1): 27-32 [PMID: 29568729 DOI: 10.5498/wjp.v8.i1.27]
Corresponding Author of This Article
Dr. Sundar Gnanavel, MD, Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services, Tyne and Wear NHS Foundation Trust, Villa No 9, Morpeth NE61 3BP, United Kingdom. sundar.gnanavel@ntw.nhs.uk
Research Domain of This Article
Psychiatry
Article-Type of This Article
Clinical Practice Study
Open-Access Policy of This Article
This article is an open-access article which was selected by an in-house editor and fully peer-reviewed by external reviewers. It is distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial (CC BY-NC 4.0) license, which permits others to distribute, remix, adapt, build upon this work non-commercially, and license their derivative works on different terms, provided the original work is properly cited and the use is non-commercial. See: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/
World J Psychiatr. Mar 22, 2018; 8(1): 27-32 Published online Mar 22, 2018. doi: 10.5498/wjp.v8.i1.27
Audit of physical health monitoring in children and adolescents receiving antipsychotics in neurodevelopmental clinics in Northumberland
Sundar Gnanavel, Sharafat Hussain
Sundar Gnanavel, Sharafat Hussain, Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services, Tyne and Wear NHS Foundation Trust, Morpeth NE61 3BP, United Kingdom
Author contributions: Gnanavel S collected data and prepared manuscript; Hussain S was the sponsor for the audit, contributed to designing the audit, did a quality check and proof read the manuscript.
Institutional review board statement: The audio was approved at the Special Care Group Effective Sub Group meeting.
Informed consent statement: No author or immediate family member has any potential conflict of interest to declare pertaining to the material presented.
Conflict-of-interest statement: No potential conflicts of interest relevant to this article were reported.
Data sharing statement: No additional data are available.
Open-Access: This article is an open-access article which was selected by an in-house editor and fully peer-reviewed by external reviewers. It is distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial (CC BY-NC 4.0) license, which permits others to distribute, remix, adapt, build upon this work non-commercially, and license their derivative works on different terms, provided the original work is properly cited and the use is non-commercial. See: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/
Correspondence to: Dr. Sundar Gnanavel, MD, Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services, Tyne and Wear NHS Foundation Trust, Villa No 9, Morpeth NE61 3BP, United Kingdom. sundar.gnanavel@ntw.nhs.uk
Telephone: +44-73-41672503
Received: October 26, 2017 Peer-review started: October 27, 2017 First decision: December 11, 2017 Revised: December 29, 2017 Accepted: January 16, 2018 Article in press: January 16, 2018 Published online: March 22, 2018
Core Tip
Core tip: A number of clinical guidelines have been developed for physical health monitoring in children and adolescents on antipsychotics. However, none of them capture the intricacies and complexities involved in prescribing antipsychotics to children and adolescents, which is distinct from adults. The typically shorter duration of prescribing, lower doses used and lack of data on long term adverse effects with antipsychotics in this population have not been taken into account. This audit aimed to ascertain if physical health of children and adolescents attending neurodevelopmental clinics in Northumberland and prescribed antipsychotics followed National Institute for Clinical Excellence guidelines. The overall audit findings were partially compliant with the guidelines. Logistic and ethical challenges as well as lack of awareness about the guidelines could underpin these findings.
