Outpatient Setting | Scenario 7

LAI Considerations

• Educate patients on the challenges of treatment adherence and normalize nonadherence as a human characteristic. Suggest that LAIs are tools that help mitigate the challenges of daily pill taking
  ^14,16
• Discuss LAI of the oral antipsychotic whose tolerability exposure has been established
• Tolerability does not differ between oral antipsychotics and LAIs
  ²⁷
• In a study, 36 patients clinically identified as having treatment-resistant schizophrenia were referred to an outpatient service for assessment. Over one-third of these patients had subtherapeutic or undetectable antipsychotic plasma levels
  ²⁸
• LAI use may take the burden from family/caregiver monitoring of patient adherence and would help clinicians assess whether relapse occurs because of nonadherence or despite adequate medication
  ^19,23