Electroconvulsive therapy

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Electroconvulsive therapy (ECT), formerly known as electroshock, is a psychiatric treatment in which seizures are electrically induced in anesthetized patients for therapeutic effect. Its mode of action is unknown. Today, ECT is most often recommended for use as a treatment for severe depression that has not responded to other treatment, and is also used in the treatment of mania and catatonia. It was first introduced in 1938 by Italian neuropsychiatrists Ugo Cerletti and Lucio Bini, and gained widespread use as a form of treatment in the 1940s and 1950s.

Electroconvulsive therapy can differ in its application in three ways: electrode placement, frequency of treatments, and the electrical waveform of the stimulus. These three forms of application have significant differences in both adverse side effects and positive outcomes. After treatment, drug therapy is usually continued, and some patients receive continuation/maintenance ECT. In the United Kingdom and Ireland, drug therapy is continued during ECT.

Informed consent is a standard of modern electroconvulsive therapy. According to the Surgeon General, involuntary treatment is uncommon in the United States and is typically only used in cases of great extremity, and only when all other treatment options have been exhausted and the use of ECT is believed to be a potentially life saving treatment. However, caution must be exercised in interpreting this assertion as, in an American context, there does not appear to have been any attempt to survey at national level the usage of ECT as either an elective or involuntary procedure in almost twenty years. In one of the few jurisdictions where recent statistics on ECT usage are available, a national audit of ECT by the Scottish ECT Accreditation Network indicated that 77% of patients who received the treatment in 2008 were capable of giving informed consent.

Despite the fact that the majority of psychiatric clinicians regard ECT as a safe and effective procedure, surveys of public opinion, the testimony of former patients, legal restrictions on its use and disputes as to the efficacy, ethics and adverse effects of ECT within the psychiatric and wider medical community indicate that the use of ECT remains controversial. This is reflected in the recent decision by the FDA's Neurological Devices Advisory Panel to maintain ECT devices in the Class III device category for high risk devices except for patients suffering from catatonia. This will result in the manufacturers of such devices having to do controlled trials on their safety and efficacy for the first time.[15] In justifying their position panelists referred to the memory loss associated with ECT and the lack of long-term data.[1]

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