The use of the main psychopharmacological groups in pregnancy and lactation, with the advantages and disadvantages that each of them contributes in this field, with special emphasis on the side effects that the use of psychotropic drugs can cause in the fetus are some of the points from the talk Psychoactive drugs in pregnancy and lactation, just presented by Professor Gentile, Head of the Salerno Mental Health Center (Italy) and one of the world’s leading authorities on the use of psychoactive drugs in pregnancy and lactation.
This conference took place within the framework of the IX Symposium on Psychiatry, promoted by the pharmaceutical company Almirall, which brought together more than 300 specialists from all over Spain this week in Barcelona.
Towards better patient care
- According to Dr. Luis Pacheco Yañez, from the Bilbao Centro Mental Health Center and one of the participants in this meeting, advances in this field mean “that less harmful psychotropic drugs for the fetus are increasingly known and, therefore, each Perhaps better care and follow-up can be provided to pregnant women who suffer from a psychiatric pathology and their children”.
- In addition, from the care point of view, “another important novelty is that more and more monographic units are being created throughout Spain to care for these patients. Most of them group together psychiatrists, gynecologists and pediatricians, with which care is much more complete and integral, throughout the pregnancy, childbirth and lactation”, adds this specialist.
The difficulty of having studies on psychotropic drugs in pregnant women
- The Symposium also dealt with the current situation and the limitations to investigate the effectiveness of drugs in pregnancy and obtain data on the results. “Studies on this matter are scarce and not very reliable due to the ethical impossibility of including pregnant women in routine trials. This is, in part, an obstacle when evaluating through cases and controls as is done in the rest of Medicine – what are the ideal drugs in these cases”, says Dr. Pacheco Yañez.
- “Despite everything, the efforts to advance in this field have been important in recent years and more and more registries of pregnant women and medicated with psychotropic drugs are being carried out, in order to compare them with control groups of pregnant women with the same pathologies and who do not have been medicated. Even so, we still have to make further progress in this field, and raise awareness among doctors and health authorities so that these records are carried out systematically and regularly in all pregnant patients,” he concludes.