Schizophrenia and cerebrovascular disease. A description of a series and bibliographic reivew

Abstract

Introduction: The state of health of patients with schizophrenia is a field of growing interest that has probably not received sufficient attention in the past. It is currently held that physical health should form a part of the overall therapeutic strategy in these patients since reference is made to certain treatable conditions that may affect the final prognosis. One example is cardiovascular disease and its associated reduction in life expectancy.

Development: We carried out a retrospective study in which we described the consultations held between the psychiatric acute care service and the neurology service during a one-year period. We have analyzed the frequency of cerebrovascular complications in our sample and have included a summary of the most relevant published data regarding cerebrovascular disease (CVD) in patients with schizophrenia.

Conclusions: We have described the high frequency of CVD in both our series of patients with severe mental illness receiving attention as well as in those from the neurology service (25.7%), and in the subgroup presenting psychotic disorders (25%). There are several studies focusing on the possible causes of increased cardiovascular morbidity and mortality, especially in schizophrenia. However, in regards to CVD specifically, little has been found in the literature and that found shows contradictory results. Given the direct relation between cardiovascular disease and CVD, a consistent relation between CVD and schizophrenia is to be expected.