Tardive dyskinesia: current clinical issues

Tardive dyskinesia (TD) consists of persistent involuntary movements that are due to antipsychotic drug treatment. Prevention depends on accurate psychiatric diagnosis and use of antipsychotics only for specific indications. Little is known about what antipsychotic drug regimens affect the risk of TD. Clinical subtypes of TD may exist. Tardive dystonia differs from oral choreic TD in its clinical phenomenology, epidemiology, and clinical pharmacology. Another possible subtype, persistent motor restlessness, seems also distinguishable in its phenomenology and epidemiology. Both of these forms of TD can be disabling, whereas typical oral TD often is not. Although TD may spontaneously remit more often than was once believed, it nevertheless is often persistent. No current therapy is universally effective.