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Instant lithium monitoring

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 January 2018

J. R. King
Affiliation:
Barnsley Hall Hospital, Bromsgrove B61 0EX
J.D. Phillips
Affiliation:
School of Health Sciences, Wolverhampton Polytechnic, Wolverhampton (correspondence: West Midlands Biological Psychiatry Research Group, Biomedical Research Laboratory, Wolverhampton Polytechnic, Wolverhampton WV1 1DJ)
R. Judge
Affiliation:
Barnsley Hall Hospital, Bromsgrove B61 0EX
A. D. Armond
Affiliation:
Burton Road Hospital, Dudley, West Midlands
J. A. Corbett
Affiliation:
Department of Psychiatry, University of Birmingham
N. J. Birch
Affiliation:
Wolverhampton Polytechnic
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Lithium therapy for affective disorders has been estimated to result in savings of hospital beds in the National Health Service of £23 million each year. In order to maintain and justify this saving we must invest to provide careful monitoring of serum lithium concentrations in patients living in the community. In recent years the advent of lithium clinics has done much to improve the compliance and safety of lithium therapy (Masterton et al, 1988), but we believe that there may be scope for further improvement both in the service to the patient and in encouragement of the patient to comply.

Type
Articles
Creative Commons
Creative Common License - CCCreative Common License - BY
This is an Open Access article, distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC-BY) license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
Copyright
Copyright © Royal College of Psychiatrists, 1991

References

Johnson, F. N. (1987) In Depression and Mania: Modern Lithium Therapy (ed. Johnson, F. N.), p. 111. Oxford: IRL Press.Google Scholar
Masterton, G., Warner, M. & Roxburgh, B. (1988) Supervising lithium. A comparison of a lithium clinic, psychiatric out-patient clinics and general practice. British Journal of Psychiatry, 152, 535538.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Phillips, J. D., King, J. R., Myers, D. H. & Birch, N. J. (1989) Lithium monitoring close to the patients. Lancet, ii, 1461.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Schou, M. (1986) Lithium treatment: a refresher course. British Journal of Psychiatry, 149, 541547.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
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