Clozapine and cancer treatment: Adding to the experience and evidence

The judiciousness of the use of clozapine in patients with schizophrenia in clinical practice is brought to an even sharper focus when it has to be used in combination with other agents that cause myelosuppression, for example, chemotherapy and radiation treatment. There are a few references till date illustrating the combination of clozapine and chemotherapy and/or radiation therapy. To the best of our knowledge, such a case has not been reported from India. We report the case of a 39-year-old gentleman with a diagnosis of schizophrenia, remaining psychiatrically stable on clozapine, who underwent combination treatment of chemotherapy and radiotherapy for the treatment of cancer of the tongue in a tertiary care oncology centre in India.