Posted by dr. dave on August 21, 2002, at 8:58:35
In reply to Knowledge » dr. dave, posted by Anyuser on August 20, 2002, at 16:37:24
This is a good point. I think my stance is that I shouldn't be changing my practice, particularly if it is an expensive change which will unavoidably reduce resources in some other area, until I have reasonable grounds for doing so, and I don't think that I have those grounds to change to Lexapro. If the drug company can't come up with reasonable evidence, with every incentive to do so, I can feel fairly sure there's not much to find.
Having said that for a particular patient with a particular problem, where all other logical options have been tried, I would give the rather far-fetched claims for Lexapro a go, but I would prefer to make decisions based on strong evidence before satisfying curiosity about a new drug for which convincing support cannot be found.
I don't think it is unreasonable to look to scientific evidence to inform my prescribing habits rather than just 'having a go' with something new in case it works. If we all did that prescribing would be even more chaotic than it already is. I think large-scale well designed studies actually do carry more weight than one doctor's anecdotal evidence.
I haven't been able to find the data which indicate a lower incidence of sexual side-effects on Lexapro than Celexa - If pharmrep or anyone can point me in the right direction I would be very interested.
poster:dr. dave
thread:109458
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/20020821/msgs/117223.html