Clinical characteristics of patients treated with electroconvulsive therapy in a public hospital in Peru

Abstract

With the purpose of describe the profile of use of electroconvulsive therapy (ECT) on hospitalized patients at “Honorio Delgado - Hideyo Noguchi” National Institute of Mental Health in Lima, Peru, the medical records of patients receiving ECT between 2001 and 2011 were reviewed. The main findings were: four hundred and nineteen ECT courses were applied to 372 patients, with a total of 5439 applications the most common diagnosis was paranoid schizophrenia (70.7%), the most common indication was resistance to treatment (80.7%), also the clinical response to ECT was good in 70.1% of cases while side effects were generally transient and mild. The use of ECT decreased over the period of the study but it was tolerable and safe, especially in the modified version, and it had a high response rate so remains as a first-line psychiatric treatment.