2013 Volume 25 Issue 4 Pages 369-375
The Nara Medical University Hospital is the only general hospital in Nara Prefecture with a psychiatric ward. Therefore, our hospital has assumed an important role in the treatment of psychiatric patients with physical comorbidities. Our hospital has provided psychiatric emergency care and treatment for physical comorbidities since April 1, 2011, the first among all the university hospitals in Japan. In this study, we investigated the demographic characteristics of inpatients between April 1, 2011 and March 31, 2013. A total of 373 patients were admitted during those two years, and 28.4% of them had physical comorbidities. The most common diagnoses according to the International Classification of Diseases (ICD)-10 were schizophrenia spectrum disorders (35.1%), followed by affective disorders (25.5%). The most common physical comorbidity was conditions requiring surgery (36%), followed by serious endocrine or metabolic disease (12%). This paper describes the status, future prospects, and problems relating to psychiatric emergencies and treatment for physical comorbidities, as well as provides suggestions for the importance of such practices in university hospital psychiatry.
