Abstract
A retrospective study of ECT was doneon a group of 99 female patients with an average age of 47 years (range 17-82 years) who were treated in a women's admission unit at a psychiatric hospital during the years 1993 - 1996. The sample consisted of 39 patients with a diagnosis of an affective disorder, mostly depression, and 60 patients with a diagnosis of an affective disorder or schizophrenia in the sample.
The total number of applied electroconvulsions was 663 with an average of 6.7 ECT per patient. ECT was given bilaterally using the Thymatron device.
Age method of stimulus dosing was used. EEG records were evaluated for seizure duration and correlated with medications concurrently used.
Results demonstrated that the use of neuroleptic positively correlated with the seizure duration (p = 0.05). Antidepressants and benzodiazepines did not correlate with the seizure duration.
However, benzodiazepines ere used only in low dosage in our sample. In the individual drug analysis, after the Bonferroni's correction, no single medication or combination treatment used in our sample correlated significantly with seizure duration (amitriptyline, dibenzepine, mianserine, levomepromazine, chlorpromazine, haloperidol. zuclopenthixol, perphenaline, combination treatment with levomepromazine - perphenaline, levomepromazine - amitryptline, levomepromazine - haloperidol).