[Maintenance therapy in schizophrenia -- a brief review of the literature].

This article reviews the role of the first and second generation antipsychotics in the long-term treatment of schizophrenia. The different forms of course, the relationship between maintenance treatment and relapse rates, the influence of depot antipsychotics and adherence on the outcome, and other predictive factors will be addressed in the paper. The necessity of a survival meta-analysis is emphasized for the calculation of the 'number needed to treat', and for a detailed analysis of the time course of recurrences.