Abstract
Maintenance electroconvulsive therapy (mECT) is an outpatient procedure for patients who have already exhibited satisfactory improvement with a conventional course of ECT and who have previously failed or do not tolerate maintenance drug therapy. We evaluated the safety of ambulatory anesthesia for mECT using the traditional ECT apparatus available in Japan. Eleven depressive patients were enrolled, and the mECT schedule provided treatment once a week for the first month, twice a month for the second month, and once a month thereafter for up to 12 times. Under propofol anesthesia, an electrical stimulus was delivered at a 110 volt setting for 7 sec. In every treatment, neurological findings, cognitive function and side effects after ECT were evaluated. All the patients recovered from anesthesia and showed complete cognitive recovery within 2 hours of ECT, and they left the hospital without any major problems 3 hours after ECT. Although the traditional sine wave curve stimuli were used in this study, our method of ambulatory anesthesia for maintenance ECT proved its safety when the subjects were strictly regulated.
