[Retrospective diagnosis of a sample of patients discharged with a diagnosis of schizophrenia]

Abstract

A retrospective diagnosis was obtained from a sample of 300 patients discharged from the Psychiatric Hospital of Maracaibo (Venezuela), with the clinical diagnosis of schizophrenia. These medical records were evaluated under DSM-III criteria, by two psychiatrists using structured formats. We found that 46.3% of the patients met the criteria corresponding to the schizophrenic disorder; from the remaining 53.6%, 19.6% did not have enough information to be included in this category, and 34.6% was classified under other psychiatric disorders. Of the patients with schizophrenic disorders, 61.2% were male, single, and Venezuelan citizens; 84.9% began their clinical manifestations during the second or third decade of their lives; 89.9% received education. The predominant symptomatology was impairment in social relations (93.5%), deterioration in hygiene and self- care (92.5%), impairment in functioning (87.1%), illogical thinking (86.3%), with predominant persecutory delusions, auditory hallucinations, dialogue hallucinations (84.6%), grandiose delusions (48.2%), and personal experiences of corporeal changes (45.3%). Affective symptomatology were present in all patients and the predominant subtype was the paranoid, that was observed in 80.6% of the cases. Positive signs of this disease in family history were present in 41 percent of the cases. Our findings confirm the necessity to unify criteria concerning the diagnosis of mental disorders, as it became evident that the variability in diagnosis, makes more difficult the psychiatric research in our country.