Pediatric Prescribing of Antipsychotics Reviewed by FDA Committee

On November 18, 2008, the FDA Pediatric Advisory Committee met. One of the topics on the agenda was prescribing of antipsychotics, including Risperdal and Zyprexa.

Data presented at the meeting indicates that prescribing of Risperdal has increased, including off label prescribing for attention deficit hyperactivity disorder. A report on use information describes the data for Risperdal. Fifty-two percent of prescriptions were written by psychiatrists. Of that amount, 21 % of prescriptions were written by child psychiatrists. Therefore, only 11.2% of these prescriptions were written by child psychiatrists.

Family medicine doctors prescribed about 11 percent of these prescriptions. Pediatricians only prescribed 3 percent.

The data indicates that the two top diagnosis codes associated with these prescriptions were "Infantile Autism" (ICD 9 299.0) and Attention Deficit Disorder (ICD 9 314.0).

The data does not indicate which prescribers were using Risperdal for attention deficit hyperactivity disorder.