Clinical Study Brain Circulation during Panic Attack: A Transcranial Doppler Study with Clomipramine Challenge

Copyright © 2014 Francesco Rotella et al. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. Introduction. Cerebral blood flow has been well studied in patients with panic disorder, but only few studies analyzed the mechanisms underlying the onset of a panic attack. The aim of the present study was to monitor the cerebral hemodynamics modifications during a panic attack. Materials and Methods. 10 panic disorder patients with recent onset, fully drug näıve, were compared to 13 patients with panic disorder with a previous history of treatment and to 14 controls. A continuous bilateral monitoring of mean flow velocities in right and leftmiddle cerebral arteries was performed by transcranial Doppler. Clomipramin