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Be extra careful about Lithium levels » alchemy

Posted by violette on June 27, 2010, at 13:27:07

In reply to Feel 'weird' starting Lithium, posted by alchemy on June 21, 2010, at 14:04:13

I know a woman in her 60s who developed severe dimentia from Lithium toxicity-she was falling down several times a day, extreme confusion, very disoriented...etc. The symptoms came on slowly, so it wasn't a rapid deterioration.

However, things got so bad that she was recently hospitalized and at the ER, they discovered the cause of those symptoms to be lithium toxicity. Of course her blood levels were being monitored by the doctor, but blood level measurements don't indicate what else is going on inside your body-maybe a person's liver metabolizes differently than others--I dont' know just throwing that out there...

So if someone could get extreme dimentia from lithium - I suppose blood levels that seem normal - but might be too high - might cause milder cognitive problems?

This woman totally recovered from her cognitive symptoms after doctors deemed lithium to be the cause. She's in her late 60s, which might be an age at risk for dimentia, but thankfully the doctors investigated the situation as they did.

One of her doctors was going to put her in a nursing home-could you imagine the implications of that-if the lithium problem was not found by the ER doctors??? She could have ended up in a nursing home for the rest of her life!

I also like the optimism from hearing of good problem solving by doctors too! Some of us could use a dose of medical optimism. :)

 

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URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/20100615/msgs/952383.html