Psychiatry and Clinical Psychopharmacology

Nonpharmacological biological therapies A retrospective review assessing the safety of transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) as a method of non-invasive brain stimulation in psychiatry

Psychiatry and Clinical Psychopharmacology 2013; 23: Supplement S184-S184
Read: 395 Published: 20 March 2021

Transcranial direct stimulation is a noninvasive brain stimulation method. Although exact mechanism is not known; depolarization and increase in spontaneous neuronal activity in the cell membrane occurs by anodal stimulation; decrease in neuronal activity occurs by cathode stimulation. In this study, files of the hospitalized and outpatient patients on whom transcranial direct stimulation was performed in a psychiatry hospital between December 2011 and September 2012 were evaluated. The mean age of the patients was 45,7 years. 14 of the cases were males (48,3%) and 15 were (51,7%) females. The mean duration of disease history was 7,8 years. Diagnostic distribution was as follows; major depressive episode (n=8 cases); dementia comorbid with depression (n=5); bipolar affective disorder-depressive episode (n=5); panic disorder (n=4); bipolar affective disorder -hypomanic episode (n=3); obsessive compulsive disorder comorbid with depression (n=2); alcohol addiction comorbid with depression with psychotic features (n=1). Response to treatment with tDCS was evaluated with brief psychiatric rating scale in all patients. Hamilton depression rating scale (HAM-D) was used for the evaluation of those patients with depression in addition to BPRS. A paired-samples t test was performed to evaluate the effectiveness of tDCS yielding a significant decrease in post treatment BPRS scores (p= .001) and HAM-D scores (p=.003). Patients were also receiving pharmacotherapy and psychotherapy which might have been responsible for the clinical improvement, however the aim of this study is not to evaluate clinical efficacy. Generally, transcranial direct stimulation is considered an option in cases in whom additional brain stimulation treatments such as electroconvulsive therapy is needed but at the same risky for the patient or in cases unresponsive to these therapies.
 

EISSN 2475-0581