Objective: Whether long-acting injectable antipsychotics (LAI) are superior to oral antipsychotics remains a controversial question, and results vary depending on the study design. Our study was performed to compare outcomes of oral antipsychotics and paliperidone palmitate (PP) in clinical practice by investigating the numbers of admissions and bed days.
Methods: We performed a retrospective observational mirror-image study at a single medical center, reviewing medical charts to obtain the clinical data. Forty-six patients with a diagnosis of schizophrenia or schizoaffective disorder who had received at least two doses of PP were included in the analysis. The Wilcoxon signed-rank test was used to compare the numbers of bed days and admissions 1 year before starting PP with those numbers at 1 year after.
Results: The mean number of admissions fell from 0.83 to 0.17 per patient (p < 0.0002), and the median fell from 1 to 0. The mean number of bed days decreased significantly, from 24.85 to 8.74 days (p < 0.006). The outcomes remained similar in sensitivity analyses set up with different mirror points.
Conclusion: Our results indicate that initiating PP reduced the mean numbers of hospital admissions and bed days compared with prior oral medication. LAIs may thus be cost effective in practice; its use bringing about cost reductions greater than its purchase cost.
Keywords: Mirror-image study; Number of admissions; Number of bed days; Paliperidone palmitate; Schizophrenia; Sensitivity analyses..