Only Marketing Information

We are accustomed to utilizing the Physicians’ Desk Reference (PDR) as a reference source. However, it is a highly incomplete reference source, compiled, as it were, with materials supplied by drug companies for a fee. It is, therefore, a widely distributed source of advertising information.

Some commonly utilized medications are not even present in the PDR, likely because the medications are off patent and the manufacturers choose not to pay the fees required for listing.

Psychiatrists attempting to find trazodone (Desyrel) and fluphenazine (Prolixin) listed will have a futile search, despite the fact that both of these are stalwarts of modern psychiatry, with fluphenazine being frequently used for chronic schizophrenia patients whose medication compliance is unreliable. Trazodone is used both as a supplemental antidepressant and, especially by primary care physicians, as a nonaddicting sedative.

The PDR serves only to list FDA-approved material. As such, it bears little resemblance to a reference source as it fails to indicate common, off-label (state-of-the-art) uses by psychiatrists in daily practice.