[Long-term course of treatment strategies in panic disorder: an update narrative review 1999-2010].

Panic disorder (PD) represents an insidious, often chronic, recurrent and relapsing illness. Although studying PD is a topical subject because it affects both treatment costs and patients' quality of life, the literature demonstrates that long-term studies are rare and not very systematic. Even if many short-term studies (within 6 months) show that the present treatment strategies have very good results, the outcome data in the long- term suggest that a significant rate of patients with PD, in remission at the end of a treatment, relapses during the follow-up, so that there is the need to find treatment strategies to maintain the remission achieved in the short-term as long as possible. This study offers an overview of 35 studies on the long-term outcomes of PD, reviewing the recent follow-up studies with at least 6 months of follow-up and that investigate the role of comorbidity in the follow-up of PD, the outcome predictors and the present treatment strategies.