Objective: ECT can be given as the form of acute, continuation or maintenance ECT according to the process of administration There is limited number of studies in the literature on maintenance ECT, with most of them are being in the form of case reports and review of the case reports. We report our 7 years’ observation with acute and maintenance ECT in a university hospital in Turkey.
Methods: The medical records of the hospitalized patients treated with acute or maintenance ECT between the years 2007 and 2013 was retrospectively analyzed. The sociodemographic characteristics, diagnosis, data of ECT and the co-administered psychotropic drugs were recorded. The frequency of ECT was calculated by identifying the total number of the hospitalized patients during the study period from the hospital records.
Results: A total number of 1432 female and 1141 male (female/male ratio 1.25:1) patients hospitalized in a period of 7 years, with a total number of 111 patients (100 acute and 11 maintenance) treated with ECT. The ratio of ECT was 4%, maintenance/acute ECT 11%. Of treated with ECT patients, male/female ratio was 1.31:1. For acute ECT, affective disorders (65.3%) and psychotic disorders (21.6%) were among the leading diagnoses. Maintenance ECT, the diagnosis was; 6 affective disorders, 4 psychotic disorders and 1 obsessive compulsive disorder. Of the patients, 33 (29.7%) were using one, 46 (41.4%) two and 32 (28.8%) three or more psychotropic drugs in addition to ECT. There was a significant difference between the patients receiving acute and maintenance ECT in terms of age, duration of illness, and number of previous hospitalizations and ECTs.
Conclusions: The percentage of patients treated with acute ECT is lower in our institution than that in many other institutions from our country. ECT was mostly given to patients with affective disorder. No deaths occurred during ECT sessions, and no severe adverse events were observed. Acute and maintenance ECT should be considered as an important treatment option particularly for patients with long disease duration, a high number of hospitalizations and a history of benefiting from previous ECTs.