Abstract
Electroconvulsive therapy (ECT) has already been used in the treatment of mental disorders for seven decades. ECT has not even lost its efficacy and topicality in this period of time.
The newest knowledge on electroconvulsive treatment published in reputable international professional journals in 2009 is summed up in this review. ECT is suitable to treat pharmacoresistant schizophrenia,where it can even reinduce previously lost treatment response to psychotropis drugs.
ECT also efficient in comorbid obsessive-compulsive symptoms. There is no sense to be afraid of applying ECT even in a depression with serious physical comorbidity in a geriatric patient, as shown in one case report.
Serious, psychotic, and pharmacoresistant depression remain basic indications for ECT. Electroconvulsions may also be ussed in neurological indications, e.g.
Parkinson's disease. Possible augmentative strategies as well as procedures to avoid adverse effects, mostly cardiovascular ones, are recently studied in ECT research.