Posted by Pfinstegg on October 9, 2002, at 19:49:57
In reply to Desperate for good info on Repetitive Transcran..., posted by ignored on October 9, 2002, at 0:17:42
Hi! Please don't feel Ignored! I am also interested in rTMS. It presently has a research-only status, but it sounds extremely promising. My psychiatrist said that she knew of two severely depressed treatment-resistant patients who had been treated with rTMS at NIH with good results. The safety is very good, memory loss has not been reported, and it much easier to endure than ECT; a few patients have had a seizure, but they tended to have family histories of epilepsy. The treatments are done daily over a period of 20 days. It has been used for unipolar, and to a lesser extent, bipolar depression. Patients who responded well show an increase in blood flow to the left prefrontal cortex, as well a change towards normal in the levels and turnover rates of serotonin and dopamine- the same things that are seen with any type of successful treatment for depression, whether by antidepressants or ECT.
It is supposed to act like a heart defibrillator, shocking the neurons into all firing at once, and in this way resetting the neurotransmitters so that they function normally. With what they know so far, it seems to be a short-term treatment- about 6 months-, but maybe this will change after they have had more years to do the research.
If you look up "rTMS Depression" on Google, there are about 1000 entries of varying levels of helpfulness; there are about 15 university centers doing research in the USA at present. The one which seemed the most informative to me was the study from Emory, which is known as a great center for all kinds of research into mood disorders. They reported that rTMS resulted in 64% "very much improved" or "much improved" depression in the patients they treated, who had averaged 7 AD failures each. Eight of the patients were also ECT failures.
I don't know how to put this in blue so you can just click on it, but the site is hsnews@emory.edu.
Hope this is sort of what you were looking for!
Pfinstegg
poster:Pfinstegg
thread:122854
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/20021006/msgs/122976.html