Recent developments in electroconvulsive therapy.
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Biomedical subjects
Publications and source records attributed to J T Pritchett.
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A patient receiving electroconvulsive therapy (ECT), clozapine, and intravenous caffeine sodium benzoate developed supraventricular tachycardia. This was rapidly treated with intravenous verapamil. Subsequent maintenance ECT given without caffeine was well tolerated. We believe the combination of clozapine and caffeine at the time of ECT was responsible for the arrhythmia.
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One hundred and thirty-four patients referred for electroconvulsive therapy (ECT) over a 2-year period underwent standardized stimulus dose-titration. No significant adverse events were associated with the dose-titration procedure. Our data demonstrate that seizure threshold increases with age (p = 0.0001) and is higher with bilateral electrode placement (p = 0.0001). Contrary to other studies, our data show the effect of gender is not statistically significant (p = 0.54). If consensus regarding optimal dosing strategies relative to seizure threshold can be achieved, dose-titration may be adopted as a clinically useful step in optimizing ECT technique.