Table of Contents
What is C ECT?
Background. Electroconvulsive therapy (ECT) is a highly effective treatment for mood disorders. Continuation ECT (C-ECT) and maintenance ECT (M-ECT) are required for many patients suffering from severe and recurrent forms of mood disorders.
What is ECT best used for?
Electroconvulsive therapy (ECT) can provide rapid, significant improvements in severe symptoms of several mental health conditions. ECT is used to treat: Severe depression, particularly when accompanied by detachment from reality (psychosis), a desire to commit suicide or refusal to eat.
What does ECT do to the brain?
WHAT IS ECT? During ECT, a small amount of electrical current is passed through the brain while the patient is under general anesthesia. This current causes a seizure that affects the entire brain, including the parts that control mood, appetite, and sleep.
Why is ECT used for depression?
With ECT, an electrical stimulation is delivered to the brain and causes a seizure. For reasons that doctors don’t completely understand, this seizure helps relieve the symptoms of depression. ECT does not cause any structural damage to the brain.
How is ECT performed?
How ECT is Performed. While the patient is under full general anesthesia, a muscle relaxant is given and electrodes are applied to the scalp. A brief electrical stimulus is delivered. The effective stimuli produce a mild seizure which changes the activity of the brain.
Does ECT help with anxiety?
ECT is not used to treat anxiety and therefore does not have a role in people who have solely an anxiety disorder. ECT may have a role in people who have comorbid depression and anxiety.
Which is the most common side effect of ECT treatment?
Headache, disorientation, and memory complaints were the most common subjective side effects during the ECT course.
Does ECT hurt?
No, the ECT procedure isn’t painful. ECT involves general anesthesia, which means you’re asleep while the procedure is happening. After the procedure, you may have some side effects, such as headache, nausea or sore muscles, but these are all normal.
What are the disadvantages of ECT?
Cons of ECT: Confusion post-treatment. Typically not well tolerated in the elderly population. Memory loss (retrograde amnesia) which usually improves within a couple months of the procedure. Physical side effects related to tension (nausea, headache, jaw aches, and muscle aches.
Does ECT change your personality?
ECT does not change a person’s personality, nor is it designed to treat those with just primary “personality disorders.” ECT can cause transient short-term memory — or new learning — impairment during a course of ECT, which fully reverses usually within one to four weeks after an acute course is stopped.
Does ECT really work?
These sessions improve depression in 70 to 90 percent of patients, a response rate much higher than that of antidepressant drugs. Although ECT is effective, its benefits are short-lived. For this reason, patients take antidepressant medication after ECT or may continue receiving ECT periodically to prevent relapse.
What does ECT stand for?
What does ECT mean? electroconvulsive therapy, electroshock, electroshock therapy, ECT (noun) the administration of a strong electric current that passes through the brain to induce convulsions and coma. see more ».
What are the pros and cons of ECT?
“While ECT can sometimes cause people to lose some past memories, we’ve become much better at mitigating that, and it’s less common and much less severe,” said Seiner, explaining unilateral placements of electrodes and the use of “ultra-brief pulses” better emulate how the brain works, so clinicians can induce seizures with less electricity and fewer side effects.
Is ECT an Ethical Treatment?
Since ECT is considered to be an established treatment, it can be used as an active comparator in a noninferiority paradigm, avoiding the ethical dilemma of treating very ill patients with a placebo treatment.