Technical, Clinical Advances Make ECT Safe, More Effective for More Patients

Electroconvulsive therapy (ECT) should be regarded as a valuable treatment for severe major depression based on severity of illness, “not just because all other treatments have failed,” said Charles Kellner, M.D., the director of the ECT service at Mount Sinai Hospital in New York City, during a workshop Saturday at APA’s fall meeting IPS: The Mental Health Services Conference in New Orleans.Technical and clinical advances have vastly improved the effectiveness and tolerability of ECT for patients with severe depression, and research is now beginning to elucidate how ECT works, he said. Kellner, who is also a professor of psychiatry and director of the Division of Geriatric Psychiatry at Mount Sinai School of Medicine, was joined at the session by Robert Greenberg, M.D., chief of geriatric psychiatry at New York University Langone Health, Brooklyn Campus; Adriana Hermida, M.D., of Emory University School of Medicine; and Robert Cotes, M.D., associate director of psychiatry residency education at Emory.Advances in ECT include technical improvements such as the development of ultra-brief pulse wave ECT. This type of ECT has been shown to substantially diminish the risk of cognitive effects, the biggest fear among patients and family members regarding the treatment. “Modern ECT causes far less retrograde amnesia [than in the past],” Kellner said. “For seriously depressed patients, [concern about this side effect] should not be a deal-breaker.”Despite improvements i...
Source: Psychiatr News - Category: Psychiatry Tags: 2017 IPS: The Mental Health Services Conference; APA Charles Kellner ECT electroconvulsive therapy M.D. Source Type: research