Electro Convulsive Therapy

Electroconvulsive therapy (ECT) has a reputation for rapid alleviation of symptoms, mainly in depressive disorders. In the current literature little attention has been paid to speed of response of psychotic symptoms in schizophrenia. We present the case of a 67-year old woman, diagnosed with schizophrenia and presenting with clozapine-resistant psychotic symptoms that swiftly remitted with ECT. We review the literature on rapid remission of schizophrenic psychosis during a treatment with ECT.

BACKGROUND AND AIMS: Thiopentone and propofol are most commonly used induction agents for electro convulsive therapy (ECT). Recently, ketofol, an admixture of propofol and ketamine, is being tried in ECT. We aimed to compare propofol, thiopentone, and ketofol as induction agents during ECT regarding their effects on ECT-induced hemodynamic changes, seizure duration and recovery parameters. MATERIAL AND METHODS: This prospective randomized double blind study was conducted in 30 patients between 18 and 65 years with ASA status I and II scheduled for ECT...

Objective: Asenapine is a second-generation antipsychotic agent that is classified as a multi-acting receptor-targeted antipsychotic and is similar to olanzapine. Our study aimed to compare the treatment continuation rate and reason for discontinuation of asenapine or olanzapine in schizophrenia using real-world data. Methods: This design was a retrospective study. The primary endpoint was Kaplan-Meier estimates of the continuation rate at six months, with the propensity score method applied to adjust for potential confounders...

BACKGROUND: Tobacco smoking has been associated with suicide, impulsivity and depression in non-clinical populations with differences across sexes. OBJECTIVE: To determine the role of tobacco smoking in Treatment-Resistant Depression (TRD) according to sex in a precision-medicine approach. METHOD: The FACE-TRD cohort is a national cohort of TRD patients recruited in 13 resistant depression expert centers between 2014 and 2021 and followed-up at 6 months...

Great controversy surrounds the use of electroconvulsive therapy or ECT. However, it continues to be used internationally. While research on short term effects of ECT abound, there is limited knowledge about long term impacts of ECT on individuals, especially from the lived experience perspective. The aim of this qualitative study was to gain an in-depth understanding of longer-term lived experiences of ECT and how people navigate any impacts on their daily lives. Twenty-three people participated in semi-structured interviews...

BACKGROUND: Current evidence on the effect of anesthetic-ECT time interval (AETI) is controversial. This study aimed to investigate the factors affecting the time interval between propofol injection and electro-convulsion induction and the relationship between these factors and the duration of convulsion. METHODS: In this study, 102 patients (616 sessions of ECT) were studied. Demographic and clinical data (age, gender, receiving or not receiving medications that affected the seizure threshold, the total number of ECT sessions, clinical severity of admission scores, clinical diagnosis, propofol dose, seizure duration, and AETI) were collected in special forms and analyzed by appropriate statistical methods...

BACKGROUND: The aims of this study were to evaluate the characteristics of patients and the pattern and rate of use of deep brain stimulation (DBS) for major depressive disorder (MDD) in the United States. METHODS: Data from the 2012-2014 Nationwide Inpatient Sample (NIS) included 116,890 patients. Patient variables included age, gender, race, median household income, insurance, primary diagnosis, primary procedure, length of stay, and total cost. Hospital variables included ownership, location, teaching status, bed size, and geographic region...

Catatonia is a symptom seen in a variety of neuropsychiatric conditions, including anti-N-Methyl D-aspartate receptor (NMDAR) encephalitis. When associated with anti-NMDAR encephalitis, catatonia is resistant to standard therapy. However, electroconvulsive therapy (ECT) has shown promising success in management. This case report presents a 25-year-old African American female who presented to the emergency room with nervousness, sweating, insomnia, and visual and auditory hallucinations. She was treated symptomatically for anxiety but returned to the hospital after she continued to experience worsening symptoms...

INTRODUCTION: Despite its effectiveness and good tolerance, electro-convulsive therapy (ECT) is under-used in current clinical practice probably because of stigma and the negative image of this treatment. The main objective of this study was to evaluate the impact of an educational video on the representations of ECT among psychiatrists and psychiatric residents in the North and in Occitanie districts of France. METHOD: We evaluated the representations of ECT through the Questionnaire on Attitudes and Knowledge of ECT (QuAKE) before (T0) and after (T1) viewing a short educational video...

Traditional therapeutic methods in psychiatry, such as psychopharmacology and psychotherapy help many people suffering from mental disorders, but in the long-term prove to be effective in a relatively small proportion of those affected. Therapeutically, resistant forms of mental disorders such as schizophrenia, major depressive disorder, and bipolar disorder lead to persistent distress and dysfunction in personal, social, and professional aspects. In an effort to address these problems, the translational approach in neuroscience has initiated the inclusion of novel or modified unconventional diagnostic and therapeutic techniques with promising results...

Despite decades of successful treatment of therapy-resistant depression and major scientific advances in the field, our knowledge about electro-convulsive therapy's (ECT) mechanisms of action is still scarce. Building on strong empirical evidence for ECT-induced hippocampus anatomy changes, we sought to test the hypothesis that ECT has a differential impact along the hippocampus longitudinal axis. We acquired behavioural and brain anatomy magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) data in patients with depressive episode undergoing ECT (n = 9) or pharmacotherapy (n = 24) and healthy controls (n = 30) at two time points 3 months apart...

OBJECTIVE: Electro-convulsive therapy (ECT) has been established as a treatment modality for patients with treatment-resistant depression and with some specific subtypes of depression. This narrative review intends to provide psychiatrists with the latest findings on the use of ECT in depression, devided into total eight sub-topics. METHODS: We searched PubMed for English-language articles using combined keywords and tried to analyze journals published from 1995-2020...

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BACKGROUND: A substantial number of patients with late-life depression (LLD) that remitted after ECT experience relapse. Identifying risk factors for relapse may guide clinical management to devote attention to those at increased risk. Therefore the current study aims to evaluate which baseline clinical characteristics are related to relapse within six months after successful ECT in patients with severe LLD. METHODS: 110 patients with LLD from the prospective naturalistic follow-up Mood Disorders in Elderly treated with Electro-Convulsive Therapy (MODECT) study were included...

BACKGROUND: To compare the antidepressant effects and cognitive adverse effects of intravenous ketamine infusion and Electro-convulsive therapy (ECT) in persons with severe depressive episodes. METHODS: This assessor-blinded randomized control trial included 25 patients (either sex; 18-65 years) meeting ICD-10 criteria for severe depression (bipolar or unipolar). Patients received either ECT (n = 13) or intravenous infusions of ketamine hydrochloride (0.5 mg/kg over 45 min; n = 12) for six alternate day sessions over a period of two weeks...

Filicide is the murder of a child by the parent. It is associated with various psychiatric and nonpsychiatric conditions. We herein present a case report of a filicide by an emotionally unstable mother suffering from depressive psychosis. A thirty years old woman previously treated for depression with psychotic features, having undergone electro-convulsive therapy and on oral medication three years ago was brought by the police for psychiatric assessment. She had slaughtered her two sons of 4 and 7 years of age three days ago without any guilt or remorse...

The recent COVID-19 pandemic has led to major organisational changes in health care settings, especially in psychiatric hospitals. We conducted a national online survey to assess the evolution of electroconvulsive therapy (ECT) in the different centres practicing this treatment. 65 responses from all over France were analysed. More than 90 % of the centres practising ECT experienced a decrease in their activity. Half of the centres experienced a total cessation of activity and 25 % of the centres experienced a decrease of more than half of their usual activity...

CONTEXT: Electro-convulsive therapy (ECT) is the most effective treatment for treatment resistant mood disorders and catatonia. ECT also appears to be an effective treatment in combination with clozapine in the context of treatment resistant schizophrenia spectrum disorders. Although increasingly codified (guidelines on indications, contraindications, methods of implementation), the practice of ECT still lacks consensual protocols. The concomitant use of psychotropic and/or non-psychotropic medication is a common situation when ECT treatment is considered...

Some evidence pointed out that Electro-Convulsive Treatment (ECT) could increase the level of brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF) in depressive patients. However, there are some disagreements. The purpose of the study is through a systematic review and meta-analysis to evaluate BDNF levels after ECT in patients with Major depressive disorder. Two independent researchers searched of published articles in the databases of Cochrane Library, PubMed, MEDLINE, EMBASE and WanFang Data, from January 1990 to March 2019...

OBJECTIVES: Postictal confusion is encountered among most patients following electro-convulsive therapy (ECT). This study aimed to test the capabilities of a point-of-care electroencephalography (EEG) method to quantitatively measure and monitor postictal confusion immediately following ECT. We evaluated whether a two-channel frontal EEG device may provide a purely quantitative measure of the postictal state that could aid in the continuous, clinical monitoring of patients following ECT...