Background: Antipsychotic medications are the cornerstones of the acute and
long-term treatment of schizophrenia. Despite their benefits in minimizing
the schizophrenia symptoms, they have been associated with the risk of
inducing QTc prolongation, which may lead to a serious life-threatening
arrhythmia and cause sudden death. Objective: To review the QTc
prolongation caused by antipsychotic medications used among psychiatric
patients. Methods: Literature search was conducted using databases such as
Scopus, Science Direct, Pubmed, and Springer link. The keywords used for
the search were “QTc prolongation”, “antipsychotic medications” and
“schizophrenia”. The inclusion criteria are articles from 2001 to 2014,
articles written in English and articles related to the effects of antipsychotics
in causing sudden cardiac death. The inclusion criteria are the articles
written in other languages and the article about other adverse effect of
antipsychotics. Results: Twenty-seven articles were found to be relevant to
this study and twenty of them which discusses about antipsychotic-induced
QT interval prolongation have been included in the table of evidence.
Conclusion: Antipsychotics regardless of the generations have the potential of
causing QT interval prolongation. The risk-to-benefit ratio that accounts for
the danger of sudden cardiac death should be evaluated before prescribing
an antipsychotic medicine and each individual patient should be assessed on
the potential contributing factors to the prolongation of QTc.