ECT practices in a psychiatry clinic at a training and research hospital

ECT practices in a psychiatry clinic at a training and research hospital Objective: Electroconvulsive therapy (ECT) is an effective method of somatic therapy used in the treatment of many psychiatric disorders. Studies conducted in Turkey indicate that the frequency of ECT use varies over quite a wide range (2.2-16.3%). This study aims to investigate the diagnostic distributions in patients who were treated with ECT at a psychiatric clinic of a training and research hospital. Method: The health records of inpatients treated in our clinic between the dates of Jan 1, 2007 and June 30, 2016 were evaluated retrospectively. Results: A total of 174 patients underwent ECT within the specified time period. Of the total patients, 65.5% were female (n=114) and 34.5% were male (n=60). The average total number of ECT sessions was 7.7±4.4. The average number of ECT sessions in women was 7.2±1.9, while the average number in men was 8.6±7.1 (p=0.044). The diagnostic distributions of ECT patients were unipolar depression (63.8%), bipolar depression (18.4%), psychosis (14.9%) and bipolar mania (2.9%). Conclusion: The frequency of ECT practice in our clinic was 6.13%. Our study showed that although ECT is known as an effective and reliable method, it is not applied in our clinic at the frequency that we expected. We believe that shedding light on the effectiveness of the ECT mechanism will render it less enigmatic and increase the scope and frequency of its use.