If the dose is rapidly decreased withdrawal may occur. Use during pregnancy or breastfeeding is not recommended. Temazepam is a short-acting benzodiazepine and hypnotic. It works by affecting GABA within the brain.Temazepam was patented in 1962 and came into medical use in 1969. It is available as a generic medication. In 2019, it was the 214th most commonly prescribed medication in the United States, with more than 2 million prescriptions. Medical uses
In sleep laboratory studies, temazepam significantly decreased the number of nightly awakenings, but has the drawback of distorting the normal sleep pattern. It is officially indicated for severe insomnia and other severe or disabling sleep disorders. The prescribing guidelines in the UK limit the prescribing of hypnotics to two to four weeks due to concerns of tolerance and dependence.The American Academy of Sleep Medicines 2017 clinical practice guidelines recommended the use of temazepam in the treatment of sleep-onset and sleep-maintenance insomnia. It rated the recommendation as weak, the quality of evidence as moderate, and concluded that the potential benefits outweighed the potential harms. The guidelines found that temazepam at a dose of 15 mg reduces sleep latency by 37 minutes (95% CI 21 to 53 minutes), increases total sleep time by 99 minutes (95% CI 63 to 135 minutes), and provides a small improvement to sleep quality.
Whilst misdiagnosis of functional symptoms does occur, in neurology, for example, this appears to occur no more frequently than of other neurological or psychiatric syndromes. However, in order to be quantified, misdiagnosis has to be recognized as such, which can be problematic in such a challenging field as medicine. A common trend is to see functional symptoms and syndromes such as fibromyalgia, irritable bowel syndrome and functional neurological symptoms such as functional weakness as symptoms in which both biological and psychological factors are relevant, without one necessarily being dominant. Weakness
Functional weakness is weakness of an arm or leg without evidence of damage or a disease of the nervous system. Patients with functional weakness experience symptoms of limb weakness which can be disabling and frightening such as problems walking or a heaviness down one side, dropping things or a feeling that a limb just doesnt feel normal or part of them. Functional weakness may also be described as functional neurological symptom disorder (FNsD), Functional Neurological Disorder (FND) or functional neurological symptoms. If the symptoms are caused by a psychological trigger, it may be diagnosed as dissociative motor disorder or conversion disorder (CD). To the patient and the doctor it often looks as if there has been a stroke or have symptoms of multiple sclerosis. However, unlike these conditions, with functional weakness there is no permanent damage to the nervous system which means that it can get better or even go away completely.