Olanzapine as a cause of peripheric edema in an elderly man

Abstract

Edema can be observed as side-effect of many medications, of which calcium channel blockers are the best known. Elderly people use many more medications than their younger counterparts and are usually more prone to developing medication-induced side-effects. Atypical antipsychotics have occasionally been shown to induce peripheric edema. Age is put forward as a risk factor for olanzapine-induced edema. We present here the case of an elderly man who developed upper- and lower-limb edema during use of olanzapine to emphasize its relatively frequent association with edema in the elderly.