[Prevention and therapy of delirium tremens with tiapride]

One hundred chronic alcoholics, who were hospitalized in our ward for neurological disorders directly or indirectly due to a prolonged and continual consumption of alcohol, have been treated with tiapride in doses varying from 600 up to 1200 mg/die. The drug was administered either per os or by injection. 50 of these patients were given, at the same time, graded doses of alcohol per os. The purpose of this study was to analyse the preventive and therapeutical effects of the drug both on ten "target symptoms" examined separately, and on the onset and duration of the alcohol abstinence syndrome. We have noticed that decreasing doses of alcohol, in the first days of hospitalization, were unable to reduce significantly the onset of fits of delirium tremens. Tiapride showed a reasonably good therapeutical activity on some features of the "target symptoms": it shortened the average duration of the symptoms, while it did not prove better than benzodiazepines in inhibiting the onset of the same. The drug was unable to prevent the onset of the abstinence syndrome, and, even if it had a favourable control over the symptoms, it was unable to shorten their duration. The mortality rate was similar to that of other reviews where benzodiazepines, or major drugs acting on the nervous system, were employed. The sedative action of tiapride, even at higher doses, was insignificant, and its hypnotic effect almost absent. No extrapyramidal disorders have been observed, at least up to 1000 mg/die.