Preferred Treatment for Adolescent Anorexia?
Preferred Treatment for Adolescent Anorexia?
This is the Medscape Psychiatry Minute. I'm Dr Peter Yellowlees. Family-based treatment (FBT) is an evidence-based therapy for adolescent anorexia nervosa (AN), but we know that less than half of those patients who receive this approach recover. We need to identify other approaches to prevent the development of the chronic form of AN for which there is no known evidence-based treatment. Now a team of investigators from Stanford University have conducted a randomized controlled trial of 164 outpatients over 7 years to compare FBT with systemic family therapy for the treatment of adolescent-onset AN. The researchers found that FBT is the preferred treatment for adolescent AN because, although both groups had similar outcomes with approximately 40% of patients in remission at follow-up, they were at a lower cost in the FBT group, mainly because of shorter inpatient stays. This very comprehensive long-term study highlights just how difficult it is to treat patients with AN and confirms the importance of FBT as a core treatment modality. This article is selected from Medscape Best Evidence. I'm Dr Peter Yellowlees.
This is the Medscape Psychiatry Minute. I'm Dr Peter Yellowlees. Family-based treatment (FBT) is an evidence-based therapy for adolescent anorexia nervosa (AN), but we know that less than half of those patients who receive this approach recover. We need to identify other approaches to prevent the development of the chronic form of AN for which there is no known evidence-based treatment. Now a team of investigators from Stanford University have conducted a randomized controlled trial of 164 outpatients over 7 years to compare FBT with systemic family therapy for the treatment of adolescent-onset AN. The researchers found that FBT is the preferred treatment for adolescent AN because, although both groups had similar outcomes with approximately 40% of patients in remission at follow-up, they were at a lower cost in the FBT group, mainly because of shorter inpatient stays. This very comprehensive long-term study highlights just how difficult it is to treat patients with AN and confirms the importance of FBT as a core treatment modality. This article is selected from Medscape Best Evidence. I'm Dr Peter Yellowlees.
