Acute Organic Brain Syndromes

Increased CNS depressant effects Increased effect of amphetamines Delusions, hostility Excessive anticholinergic effects Increased antiarrhythmic effect Decreased antihypertensive efficacy Acute organic brain syndrome... 

At the June 1985 Consensus Conference on ECT, critics and advocates of ECT debated the issue of efficacy. The advocates were unable to come forth with a single study showing that ECT had a positive effect beyond 4 weeks. Many studies showed no effect, and in the positive studies, the improvements were not dramatic. That the treatment had no positive effect after 4 weeks confirmed the brain-disabling principle since 4 weeks is the approximate time for recovery from the most mind-numbing effects of the ECT-induced acute organic brain syndrome or delirium. 

The Production of Delirium (Acute Organic Brain Syndrome)... 

After one or more shock treatments, ECT routinely produces delirium or an acute organic brain syndrome. Abrams (1988), although an advocate of the treatment, has himself observed that... 

As for the human experience, workers exposed to small amounts of nerve agents that produced mild, nonthreatening medical signs of exposure, reported CNS effects such as headache, insomnia, excessive dreaming, restlessness, drowsiness, and weakness. Clearly, exposure to nerve CWA may produce stress reactions, organic brain syndromes, or both, McDonough and Romano provide a deeper discussion of the effects of acute or chronic exposure to nerve agents in Chapter 4 of this book. 

Thrombotic thrombocytopenic purpura is a rare acute or subacute disease in adults, rather similar to the hemolytic uremic syndrome in children, in which there is systemic malaise, fever, skin purpura, renal failure, hematuria and proteinuria. Hemorrhagic infarcts caused by platelet microthrombi occur in many organs in the brain they may cause stroke-like episodes (Matijevic and Wu 2006) although more commonly there is global encephalopathy. The blood film shows thrombocytopenia, hemolytic anemia and fragmented red cells. The differential diagnosis includes infective endocarditis, idiopathic thrombocytopenia, heparin-induced thrombocytopenia with thrombosis, systemic lupus erythematosus, non-bacterial thrombotic endocarditis and disseminated intravascular coagulation. 

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