Key result
Prolonged lithium treatment is linked to fatal heart failure in a case report.
Why the study?
Few cardiac side-effects of lithium treatment have been reported despite early warnings of heart complications.
Case Report (n=1)
Highlights a rare but fatal cardiac complication (heart failure) associated with prolonged lithium treatment.
Alerts clinicians to monitor ECGs in lithium-treated patients; leaves open the true incidence and causality of cardiac effects.
Lithium has been used in the treatment of psychiatric disorders since 1949 (2), but as early as in 1907 there was a warning in The Practitioner (11) against “depression and dilatation of the heart”. Few cardiac side‐effects have since been reported. Temporary ECG changes with flattening of the T waves have been described (3, 6), as have frequent ventricular extrasystoles in association with therapeutic concentrations (10). One fatal case of interstitial myocarditis has been described by Tseng in 1971 (12). The lithium determinations in the latter case have been criticized by Schou (5). We report a fatality probably due to prolonged lithium treatment
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Swedberg et al. (1974) conducted a case report in Psychiatric disorders (n=1). Lithium was evaluated on Fatality. Prolonged lithium treatment was reported as the probable cause of a fatality.
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