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Theodore Van Putten, MD; Stephen R. Marder, MD; Jim Mintz, PhD
West Los Angeles Veterans Administration Medical Center Brentwood Division Wilshire and Sawtelle boulevards Los Angeles, CA 90073

Arch Gen Psychiatry. 1985;42(8):835.

	Since this article does not have an abstract, we have provided the first 150 words of the full text PDF and any section headings.

To the Editor.—

The article by Smith et al¹ on the relation between plasma haloperidol levels and clinical response suggests a "therapeutic window" relationship with a therapeutic plasma level range between 7.0 and 17.0 ng/mL for hospitalized schizophrenic patients. That is, above 17.0 ng/mL the patient's condition may either fail to improve or even worsen. If this is true (and if it applies to the usual newly [re]admitted schizophrenic patient), our work² and that of Itoh et al³ would indicate that the majority of inpatient schizophrenics in the western world are in the psychotoxic plasma-level range!

Itoh and colleagues,³ in a series of 135 schizophrenic patients, and our group,² in a series of 70 patients, found respective correlations of.77 and.82 between dose and haloperidol plasma level. We attribute these high and very comparable correlations to good compliance (we will not enter a patient into the . . . [Full Text PDF of this Article]

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