Posted by linkadge on July 18, 2006, at 19:49:45
In reply to Re: Anyone had ECT?, posted by SLS on July 18, 2006, at 18:15:00
Well to play the devils advocate, I'd have to say that ECT is not a good idea.
To say that something like 80% of people get better with ECT is misleading. For starters, ECT has an extrordinarily high relapse rate. So whatever sucess you get, for whatever dammage it causes, the results aren't going to last.
The problem with trying to quantify its sucess rate is that many people who have the procedure suffer significant memory problems and so how are we to trust their accounts of how they feel in comparison to how they felt?
If you go to a hospital which offers ECT, do you think they are going to not recomend it? If a nurse or doctor said, its going to fry your brain, like perhaps some of them may believe, they'd get fired on the spot.
Many of the so called "theraputic" effects of ECT are consistant with a severe and traumatic brain injury. The induction of BDNF, is also consistant with a brain injury. BDNF, for instance, is one of the brains major neuroprotective proteins. If the brain feels that it is being insulted or dammaged in any way, it will release BDNF to try and protect itself from dammage. BDNF expression is high after traumatic brain injury. GFAP, is another protein that is markedly increased after ECT. This protein is also increased after traumatic brain injury.
I had it pointed out (and its often true) that if you go to the section of the hospital that deals with traumatic brain injury, they can often be the most chipper section of the hospital.
Not everbody gets better from ECT, infact some get profoundly worse. If you don't improve, then you also have to deal with the possability that your brain will be altered in an irreversable way. Sometimes too, a patient will improve for a while, but then relapse is more profound accounting to the fact that they feel they have lost many of their faculties.
There is one doctor out there who claims he can tell how many ECT procedures an animal has had just by looking at the post mortem brain.
I knew a few people who had the procedure, and at firt they felt better, but a little later they said it was the biggest mistake of their life.
There is **not** an overwhealming conscensious within the medical comunity that ECT is a safe procedure. I spoke to a biology professer from the University of Torotono, who essentially said that we don't have the evidence to suggest that ECT is without long term consequence to neural functioning.
When most doctors agree that we don't really have any idea how ECT works, how can you believe them when they say that it is completely safe. In my opinion, one would need to know how it works before knowing for sure that it is safe.
There is memory loss which may be permanant and can sometimes lead to greater future impairment and depression. There are complaints of significant lasting cognitive impairment too. Though, doctors can pawn off a lot of side effects as being a result of the "underlying depression"
I understand the suffering of an individual who is prepared to try ECT, but I would urge them to keep trying other things, for the sake of your long term mental health.
Linkadge
poster:linkadge
thread:667778
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/20060717/msgs/668106.html