VIDEO: Current clinical recommendations advised for TD

Editor’s note: This is a previously posted video, and the below is an automatically generated transcript to be used for informational purposes. Please notify iwaters@healio.com if there are concerns regarding accuracy of the transcription.

Clinical recommendations are very important and a rather standard, I would say in the moment sort of field. Early recognition is key. We do think that patients who have had tardive dyskinesia for long periods of time, have a more challenging time in trying to resolve these movements. Whereas patients who are recently recognized and diagnosed tend to have a better prognosis. So being able to work with the, either a psychiatrist or a gastroenterologist who's prescribing the presumed offending agent and being able to withdraw these agents as soon as the symptoms emerge, I think it's really very, very important. As well trying to minimize the long-term use of these agents. Now, you realize that that is difficult particularly in the psychiatric world where many of these patients need to be on these medications for prolonged periods of time. However, working closely with a psychiatrist and being able to make a change in these drugs can certainly help. As well as trying to use the least amount of drug that helps. So I think particularly in terms of psychiatric control it's always wise to try to use the least amount of medicine that controls the psychosis or the depression or whatever is the indication of the drugs. Patients over the age of 50, particularly the elderly are at higher risk of TD. So it's also important to be mindful that these, if these drugs are being prescribed, the target population to which they're being prescribed to is important to keep in mind. And in general, we don't really encourage the use of anticholinergics in combination with anti-psychotics. The anticholinergics are often used for the treatment of tremor, and there is this belief that it can delay the onset of tardive dyskinesia but this has not been proven to be true. And in fact, patients who have tardive dyskinesia who start taking antipsychotics actually can have worsening in the severity of their symptoms. So we really advice against the use of anticholinergic medications. So I think those as a whole are the main recommendations that I would say at least in the field of movement disorders that we usually advise to go by.