Between 5 and 9 Years’ Follow-Up in the Treatment of Anorexia nervosa

Abstract

The paper reports on the clinical characteristics, treatment and results of a group of 41 patients suffering from anorexia nervosa. All patients were diagnosed according to DSM-III criteria. Mean age was 18.6 years, within a range from 12 to 33 years. The group was formed by 40 female patients and 1 male. Twenty-nine percent of the patients had previously received treatment. Duration of treatment fell within a range of 10–36 months, 18–24 being the most frequent. Forty-four and a half percent of the patients were admitted to hospital with a 59-day mean time of hospitalization and treatment was positive in over 80% of cases. Two patients suffered a relapse during the first 2 or 3 years, but later recovered. Five years after the beginning of treatment, 1 patient suffered a relapse and received supplementary treatment.

Ten-year follow-up of anorexia nervosa: clinical course and outcome

“…1977;Ziolko, 1978;Dally & Gomez, 1979;Hsu et al 1979;Bassoe & Eskeland, 1982;Morgan et al 1983;Steinhausen & Glanville, 1983;Hall etal. 1984;Martin, 1985;Toner et al 1986;Santonastaso et al 1987;Sagardoy et al 1989;Ratnasuriya et al 1991) support the conclusion that this disorder, though variable in course and outcome, is sometimes fatal and often follows a severe and chronic course. While almost 25 % had recovered from the anorexic illness at 10 years follow-up, a little over 25% had a 'good' outcome with normal weight and regular menstrual cycles, but still with abnormal eating and weight control behaviour or significant body perception disturbance.…”

Re-examining premature mortality in anorexia nervosa: A meta-analysis redux

“…However, because follow-up time was not a significant predictor of SMR after the exclusion of two outliers, we do not believe that our generalizability was adversely affected. We also calculated the SMR using expected rates for females aged 15-34 in the general population, which was representative of most patients enrolled in the studies included, but not all (on average, only 4% of patients [range: 0-18%] were male, and mean age at entry was 21 years [range: [14][15][16][17][18][19][20][21][22][23][24][25][26][27]). Additionally, because most studies included women aged 15-34, future mortality research is needed in younger, older, and male populations with AN.…”