[Leponex: experience of the hospital pharmacist]

Clozapine's monitoring, with a co-responsibility between psychiatrists and pharmacists, is very efficient for the prevention of neutropenia's side effects. This intensive drug safety has lowered the cases of agranulocytosis in France to a 0.5% prevalence. However the cost of clozapine led to a strict estimation for health expenditures. Our study, performed in a university department of psychiatry in Sainte-Anne Hospital (Paris), has included 14 patients treated with clozapine for at least 12 months and has displayed a decrease of 10% in their annual global cost, comparing with the same group of patients treated by classical neuroleptics during the preceding year. This global cost includes the treatment, the blood monitoring and the cost of different hospital or community cares. Quality of life, in the clozapine group, was much improved, as illustrated by the shortened full time hospitalization which was followed at an earlier stage by community care and earlier social readaptation.