Antipsychotics, Dementia, and Mortality Risk: Risk of Mortality Among Individual Antipsychotics in Patients With Dementia, Feb 09, 2012

"Using national data from the US Department of Veterans Affairs for fiscal years 1999-2008, Kales and colleagues retrospectively assessed 180-day mortality risk for 33,604 patients with dementia aged 65 years or older who began outpatient treatment with risperidone, olanzapine, quetiapine, haloperidol, or valproate. Using multivariate models and propensity adjustments, the investigators found that haloperidol was associated with the highest mortality rates (relative risk [RR], 1.54; 95% confidence interval [CI], 1.38-1.73), followed by risperidone (reference), olanzapine (RR, 0.99; 95% CI, 0.89-1.10), valproic acid and its derivatives (RR, 0.91; 95% CI, 0.78-1.06), and quetiapine (RR, 0.73; 95% CI, 0.67-0.80). The mortality risk with haloperidol was highest in the first 30 days but decreased significantly and sharply thereafter. Among the other agents, mortality risk differences were most significant in the first 120 days and declined in the subsequent 60 days during follow-up"

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