[ECG changes in psychiatric patients under long-term therapy with psychopharmaca (author's transl)]

Within the scope of an epidemiologic study on risk factors and coronary heart diseases, 1726 mentally ill, aged 40-69, under permanent hospitalization were examined electrocardiographically. There were few pronounced indications of a relationship between pathological ECG findings and psychopharmaca. ECG changes were rarest among patients treated exclusively with non-tricyclic drugs, and most often among those patients who received tricyclics and non-tricyclics simultaneously. Statistically ascertained, however, was only the connection with lesser pathological changes in the rest and load ECG's (T-flattening). In this connection, these disturbances appeared more often among women. A reciprocal effect between sex and the influence of psychopharmaca appeared on the ECG. Contrary to males, females under treatment with tricyclica or with several psychopharmaca simultaneously showed more ECG changes than those treated without medication.