Psychotropic drugs used in the area of internal medicine include almost always antianxiety drugs. However, the patients who should be treated with antidepressants are prone to increase gradually in recent years.In the analysis of psychotropic drugs used in the psychosomatic clinic of our department, antianxiety drugs were most frequently used in 88% of all patients, whereas antidepressants were used in 37%.Beside, 25% of all patients were treated with combination of antianxiety drugs and antidepressants, and 24% of all patients were treated with psychotropic drugs (antianxiety drugs or antidepressants) and somatic drugs such as anticholinergic drugs, Domperidone, Metoclopramide combined. According to our experience, antianxiety drugs such as Diazepam, Cloxazolam, Flutazolam, Oxazolam, Clotiazepam, Etizolam, and antidepressants such as Amitryptiline, Dibenzepin, Imipramine, Maprotiline, Sulpiride seemed to be effective and useful for psychosomatic diseases in the area of internal medicine.The side effects were recognized in 0.3% of the patients treated with antianxiety drugs, in 0.7% of those treated with antidepressants. The incidence of side effects of these drugs was lower than that of these drugs in premarketing period respectively.Next, we studied the clinical efficacy of various antianxiety drugs on irritable bowel syndrome (IBS), because this syndrome is one of the most important psychosomatic disease and a disturbance occurs in the function of the digestive tract.Flutazolame, Prazepam, Oxazolam, Etilozam seemed to be effective and useful for this syndrome. However, there was no antianxiety drug which was effective for all patients with this syndrome.Moreover, we studied the clinical efficacy of combined use of an antiulcer drug (Gefarnate) and an antianxiety drug (Alprazolam) on the patients with gastric ulcer.This combiantion therapy was effective not only for an early improvement in subjective symptoms but also for the healing of ulcer.Furthermore, the patients with gastro-duodenal ulcer once healed by medication were treated with maintenance therapy to prevent recurrence and they were followed up endoscopically for more than two years.Analysis of the contents of maintenance therapy showed that the relapse rate of patients who had used antianxiety drug alone or some antiulcer drugs, especially stimulants to mucosal defensive factors, with antianxiety drugs were lower than that of those who had used many kinds of antiulcer drugs without antianxiety drug.That was to say that the combined use of antianxiety drugs and antiulcer drugs seemed to be very effective in preventing relapse of gastro-duodenal ulcer.
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