[Bipolar disorder. Follow-up of lithium therapy in a clinic]

Lithium carbonate is the drug of choice in the prophylactic treatment of bipolar disorder. The purpose of this article is to describe the effective functioning of lithium in a clinical way in our hospital under the control of university graduates in nursing. During the first ten months of its use, 40 patients have been included which led to 122 appointments, absenteeism being 8.62%. 20% (8/40) of the lithium intoxications at the start of the follow-up were inferior to 0.5% mmol/l while at the end, only 5.3% (2/38) fell below 0.5% mmol/l. The average of the lithium intoxications at the end of the study period was significantly higher than in the moment of entrance to the program (p = 0.009). During the study period, three relapses were registered.