[Individual conditions of pharmacogenic confusion conditions. Comparison of amitriptyline and clozapine].

The literature was surveyed concerning the frequency and conditions for confusional states and deliria following Amitriptyline and Clozapine treatment, and certain discrepancies were noted. As a result a retrospective comparative investigation was carried out as to the frequency and the conditions for such events in a group of patients treated along the same lines. While our experience with Amitriptyline is not different from that reported by others, this does not seem to be the case with Clozapine. Confusional states and deliria are four times as frequent as the average reported in the literature; it is clear that they depend on conditions different from those of confusional states and deliria due to Amitriptyline; there is a slightly significant (p less than 0.05) correlation between the appearance of confusion and a temperature of over 37.5 degrees C. The anticholinergic properties of Amitriptyline and of Clozapine cannot explain the difference in frequency, nor the differing conditions for the appearance, of pharmacogenic confusional states and deliria with those two substances.