Posted by linkadge on June 3, 2008, at 7:32:37
In reply to Re: Wow! Excellent point » Racer, posted by Zeba on June 2, 2008, at 23:19:22
There is a severe lack of long term data on people who have ECT. There have been a few studies more recently that are not too promising. The one study by Sakiem found that something like %70 of the responders relasped within one year.
The cognative side effects are real, there is no purpose of trying to play them down. The real issue in the varience of responce, IMHO, is simply the nature of ECT.
There are animal models of ECT induced brain damage. Infact some researchers were looking into pharmacological agents which might help reduce excitotoxicity during ECT. There are two problems with that. 1) Such drugs seem to reduce the effectiveness of ECT 2) You have to actually admit that ECT can cause brain damamge before you endorse agents to prevent it.
The conscenssus seems to be some sort of excitotoxic mechanism. It is evident in animal models of ECT. Even if you don't complain about memory loss, there are cumulative cellular effects of ECT.
Why some people don't complain of cognative impariment?
Possibilities include:
1) denial
2) lost memory but unaware of it
3) asked about memory loss too early
4) individual variences in antioxidant or cellular resiliance
5) Location and sevarity of excitationLinkadge
poster:linkadge
thread:832202
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/20080528/msgs/832652.html