Electric shock therapy, the standard treatment for patients with severe depression, could be replaced with deep brain stimulation in the future if the procedure gets approval.
Treating patients with severe mental illnesses remains a complex task, but some doctors believe deep brain stimulation could be more promising.
Doctors currently use electric shock therapy (ECT) on patients suffering from depression, which is currently considered one of the safest and most effective treatments for clinical depression when medication does not work, according to WebMD. To use this method, a doctor puts the patient under anesthesia and places electrodes on their scalp. The electrodes send a finely controlled electric current to the brain, causing a brief seizure.
The newer treatment being considered - deep brain stimulation - is already being used on patients with Parkinson's disease and obsessive-compulsive disorder. Doctors are now looking to get the treatment approved for use on severely depressed patients, reported The Denver Post.
The deep brain stimulation procedure, like ECT, sends electrodes to the brain. However, with this procedure the electrodes are implanted in the brain and receive continuous pulses from a pacemaker placed under the skin of the chest.
The doctors who are pushing for the approval to use deep brain stimulation on severely depressed patients believe the treatment is better than ECT because it targets a specific area of the brain instead of causing a seizure of the whole brain, reported The Denver Post. It's believed that deep brain stimulation will result in less memory loss than ECT.
"It's super complex, and there is still a lot we do not know," Dr. David VanSickle, a neurosurgeon who uses deep brain stimulation to treat patients with obsessive-compulsive disorder at Littleton and Porter Adventist hospitals, told The Denver Post. "I think it looks really promising. It may be the thing people go to in the future."
