Electroconvulsive therapy side-effects

Electroconvulsive therapy (ECT) is a highly efficacious treatment for MDD. The response rate is about 80% to 90% and even exceeds 50% for patients who have failed pharmacotherapy.16,17 ECT may be particularly beneficial for MDD that is complicated by psychotic features, severe suicidality, refusal to eat, pregnancy, or contraindication/non-response to pharmacotherapy.16,17 ECT is typically a very safe treatment alternative, but various cautions do exist, and the chief side effects are confusion and memory impairment.16... 

Repetitive TMS, unlike electroconvulsive therapy (ECT), uses sub-convulsive stimuli to treat depression. Compared to ECT, TMS has a potential to target specific brain regions and to stimulate brain areas thought to be primarily involved in depression while sparing areas like the hippocampus, thereby reducing the probability of cognitive side effects. However, the therapeutic efficacy of TMS as a treatment for depression is, unlike ECT, modest. Most TMS studies use high-frequency, fast stimulation (> 10 Hz) over the left dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, an area which has been... 

Ghaziuddin, N., Laughrin, D., and Giordani, B. (2000) Cognitive side effects of electroconvulsive therapy in adolescents. / Child Adolesc Psychopharmacol 10 269—276. 

Electroconvulsive therapy is one of the most efficacious treatments for adults with nonresistant (70% response) and resistant MDD (50% response) (APA, 2000). Because of the invasiveness of this treatment, however, it remains the treatment of choice only for the most severe, incapacitating forms of resistant depression. No studies have been carried out among adolescents, but anecdotal reports have suggested that adolescents with refractory depression may respond to ECT without significant side effects (Rey and Walter, 1997). Approximately 60% of adult patients treated successfully with ECT tend to relapse after 6 months (APA, 2000). Therefore, they must also receive maintenance treatment with antidepressants and sometimes maintenance ECT. There are no reports of use of maintenance ECT in adolescents. 

Inositol has been given in cases of diabetes for possible therapeutic effects on peripheral neuropathy at doses of 20 g/day with no side effects (Arendrup et al. 1989]. Recently, newborns were treated with inositol 80 mg/kg with marked benefit in respiratory distress syndrome, and no side effects were reported [Hallman et al. 1992]. In addition to the above, 10 psychiatrically healthy volunteers were given 12 g of inositol in a single dose, and no side effects or mood effects were reported [Levine et al. 1994] 15 patients were treated for 5 days each with 6 g of inositol daily for electroconvulsive therapy-induced confusion, with no clinical effects and no side effects (Levine et al. 1995b] and 4 patients with Li -induced electroencephalographic [LEG] abnormalities were treated for 7 days with 6 g daily of inositol [Barak et al. 1994] with minimal EEG effects and no side effects. 

Rubin, E. H., Kinscherf, D. A., Figiel, G. S., Zorumski, C. R 1993, The nature and time course of cognitive side effects during electroconvulsive therapy in the elderly, J.Geriatr.Psychiatry Neurol., vol. 6, no. 2, pp. 78-83. 

Several early studies suggest that tryptophan can potentiate the antidepressant effect of monoamine oxidase inhibitors. However, since it also tends to potentiate the side effects of these drugs, the combination is usually used only in treatment-resistant patients. Even though tryptophan potentiates the action of monoamine oxidase inhibitors, it does not seem to potentiate the action of other antidepressant treatments such as tricyclic antidepressant and electroconvulsive therapy.52... 

An effective but much less widely used treatment for depression is electroconvulsive therapy (ECT), which leaves patients with few permanent side effects. Patients receive about four to ten treatments over a two-week period. Confusion and memory loss are minimized by the common practice of applying the electric stimulus to only the nondominant brain hemisphere, usually the right-brain hemisphere. The exact mechanism of ECT is unknown. However, experts are certain that the seizures, rather than the electric current itself, are the basis for the treatment s effectiveness. More specifically, seizures can enhance... 

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