| Electroconvulsive Therapy Can Be Life-Threatening Due To Previously Overlooked Respiratory Complications Review of :"Morbidity in electroconvulsive therapy" European Journal of Anaesthesiology 08/08/2001 By David Loshak So far from being a low-risk procedure, as widely thought, electroconvulsive therapy has a particularly high rate of respiratory complications that may have been previously overlooked. Regular ambulatory anaesthesia may therefore be inappropriate for most patients given electroconvulsive therapy, argue anaesthesiologists at Centre Hospitalier Universitaire Dupuytren, Limoges, France. Their finding that electroconvulsive therapy carries substantial risk runs counter to much previous research. The French anaesthesiologists carried out a retrospective assessment of complications and morbidity of electroconvulsive therapy in 75 patients during 612 procedures conducted under propofol anaesthesia. More than two-thirds of the patients (n=51, 68 percent) had at least one complication during treatment. Of these complications, 12 were potentially life-threatening. One patient developed angina and another aspiration pneumopathy. There were two incidences of bronchospasm, three hypoxic episodes and five severe episodes of laryngospasm which caused hypoxia. One third of the patients (n=25, 33.3 percent) were confused for more than two hours after electroconvulsive therapy. Confusion recurred in 10 patients (13.3 percent) after several sessions of electroconvulsive treatment. Six patients had a traumatic complication, one requiring surgery. European Journal of Anaesthesiology 2001; 18 (8): 511-518. "Morbidity in electroconvulsive therapy" |
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