• Med. Sci. Monit. · Apr 2009

    Case Reports

    Repeated electroconvulsive therapy courses improved chronic regional pain with depression caused by failed back syndrome.

    • Kazumasa Suzuki, Yukio Ebina, Tsuyoshi Shindo, Takehisa Takano, Shuichi Awata, and Hiroo Matsuoka.
    • Department of Psychiatry, Tohoku University Hospital, Aoba-ku, Sendai, Japan. kazumasa-tohoku@umin.ac.jp
    • Med. Sci. Monit. 2009 Apr 1; 15 (4): CS77-9.

    BackgroundElectroconvulsive therapy (ECT) is reported to be effective for intractable chronic pain with depression. However, not much has been done to clarify the ECT target in patients, whether the pain or the depression. We report a case of intractable chronic regional pain syndrome (CRPS) with secondary depression in which the depression was treated successfully with an initial acute ECT course, and the pain finally improved with two additional ECT courses.Case ReportsThe patient was a 48-year-old woman with CRPS and depression caused by failed back syndrome. The CRPS with depression did not respond to standard treatments. A course of bilateral acute ECT (12 sessions) improved the depressive symptoms but not the pain. The depression relapsed 1 month after the response to ECT. A second course of acute ECT (20 sessions) followed by continuation ECT (11 sessions) improved the depression but not the pain. The depression recurred 1 year after the response to acute ECT. A third course of acute ECT (12 sessions) finally improved the pain and resolved the depression.ConclusionsOur experience in thin case suggests that the therapeutic target in patients with chronic organic pain and secondary depression should be the pain; repeated ECT courses are likely to be effective for the pain, although the depression may resolve first.

      Pubmed     Full text   Copy Citation     Plaintext  

      Add institutional full text...

    Notes

     
    Knowledge, pearl, summary or comment to share?
    300 characters remaining
    help        
    You can also include formatting, links, images and footnotes in your notes
    • Simple formatting can be added to notes, such as *italics*, _underline_ or **bold**.
    • Superscript can be denoted by <sup>text</sup> and subscript <sub>text</sub>.
    • Numbered or bulleted lists can be created using either numbered lines 1. 2. 3., hyphens - or asterisks *.
    • Links can be included with: [my link to pubmed](http://pubmed.com)
    • Images can be included with: ![alt text](https://bestmedicaljournal.com/study_graph.jpg "Image Title Text")
    • For footnotes use [^1](This is a footnote.) inline.
    • Or use an inline reference [^1] to refer to a longer footnote elseweher in the document [^1]: This is a long footnote..

    hide…