[Improvement criteria after neuroleptic treatment and clinical and neuroradiological factors in schizophrenic psychoses. Preliminary studies].

In 40 schizophrenic patients, various criteria of clinical improvement after neuroleptic treatment were compared in order to establish correlations between improvement after treatment and some clinical and MRI parameters. Three ways of evaluation of clinical improvement (CGI scale, PANSS index, percentage of improvement) correlated strongly with one another. Only the distribution of numbers of patients with different clinical improvement evaluated by the use of PANSS index was not statistically significant. Clinical improvement, evaluated with all three methods, significantly correlated with basal PANSS score as well as with the severity of positive symptoms and affective blunting, but not with the severity of schizophrenia negative symptoms. Only clinical improvement with the use of CGI demonstrated significantly better improvement in patients who had good previous response to neuroleptics. This particular method of clinical improvement evaluation, in contrast to other two methods, failed to reveal better response to neuroleptics among patients with no cortical atrophy found in MRI. Among patients with different improvement after treatment, evaluated with the use of all three methods, selected MRI parameters did not show significant differences with the exception of CGI improvement which correlated positively with the intensity of signal in T2-weighted image of gray matter in left medial frontal gyrus.