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A protocol to augment ECT seizure duration

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 January 2018

Douglas Gee  and
Anthony White
Douglas Gee
Affiliation:
Senior House Officer in Psychiatry
Anthony White
Affiliation:
County Hospital, Durham DH1 4ST
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The presence of a generalised seizure is necessary, although not sufficient, for effective ECT. Awareness of this has led to a widespread practice of documenting not only the occurrence but also the duration of seizures; a minimum duration of 25 seconds has been suggested (Royal College of Psychiatrists, 1989). Yet even the most recent surveys of practice have shown that on most occasions when a seizure is brief or absent the treating doctor does nothing about it (Scott et al, 1989; Pippard, 1992).

Type
Audit in practice
Information
Psychiatric Bulletin , Volume 17 , Issue 10 , October 1993 , pp. 606 - 607
Creative Commons
Creative Common License - CCCreative Common License - BY
This is an Open Access article, distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC-BY) license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
Copyright
Copyright © Royal College of Psychiatrists 1993

References

American Psychiatric Association (1990) A Task Force on ECT. Recommendations for clinical practice, education and training and privileging in electroconvulsive therapy. Washington, DC: APA.Google Scholar
Coffey, C. E., Weiner, R. D., Hinkle, P. E., Cress, M. et al (1987) Augmentation of ECT seizures with caffeine. Biological Psychiatry, 22, 637–639.Google Scholar
Pippard, J. (1992) Auditing the administration of ECT. Psychiatric Bulletin, 16, 59–62.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Royal College of Psychiatrists (1989) The Practical Administration of Electroconvulsive Therapy. London: Gaskell (Royal College of Psychiatrists).Google Scholar
Scott, A. I. F., Shering, P. A. & Dykes, S. (1989) Would monitoring by electroencephalogram improve the practice of electroconvulsive therapy? British Journal of Psychiatry, 154, 853–857.Google Scholar
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