Posted by Enigma on August 17, 2005, at 10:40:29
In reply to Re: ECT - who is it good for?, posted by med_empowered on August 16, 2005, at 17:07:55
Jeez, I'm a software engineer. I can't afford to have even the slightest chance of congnitive impairment. Then again, I can easily say that all the prescription drugs I've taken, HAVE and do cloud my mind. I'm really at a loss.
I'm currently getting harrassing letters from work, I have an ex-doctor that needs a whole week to fax in 2 sheets of paper (to my LTD carrier), and simply make a phone call to a hospital (that offers ECT) as a referal, and my job gets re-filled in 3-4 weeks if I can't go back to work.
Life is good. No wait, it isn't. It's a miracle I haven't driven off a cliff yet, or done something ... uhh, never mind.
> ECT does help some people, but there are considerable side effects (memory loss is the most discussed one, but some ECT patients seem to have long-term cognitive problems, especially if they did more "intensive" treatment). I have relatives who had it a while ago (they're older...I think they did it in the 70s or 80s, when ECT was more refined than in the past but not as popular as it is now). I must say...I'm *not* impressed. They still have to take antidepressant, benzos, and occasional add-on meds; the only real difference is that they psychotic features that characterized one person's depressive episode have not recurred, although he still gets mildly depressed periodically, even on long-term (since before the ECT, and during and afterwards) medication. The data isn't all that great because ECT never had to undergo FDA approval (it started in the 30s, and it apparently got exempted from having to prove itself to the FDA in later years)...the available data is largely from doctors who have themselves performed ECT and done the data collection in the studies. The same goes for the data on cognitive effects--standard practice has been for the same doctor/treatment team to do a follow-up after the treatments are over to see if there are any ill effects. Given the conflict-of-interest, I think this is unacceptable, but thats how it goes. In addition, its important to keep in mind that standardized measures of cognitive impairment, even intelligence tests, have serious flaws (for example...some studies showed either no change from baseline or minimal change from baseline in patients who had undergone traditional *LOBOTOMY* Obviously, when you cut up someone's brain bad things can happen, but alot of times it just didn't show up in the tests doctors chose to use).
poster:Enigma
thread:542430
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/20050816/msgs/542955.html