Electroconvulsive therapy and cognitive performance

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Abstract
Kolbeinsson H, Petursson H, Skulason S, Arnarson E. Electroconvulsive therapy and cognitive performance. Cognitive functions were assessed in patients referred for unilateral ECT. prior to, during and 7 and 28 days following completion of the course of treatment. Matched healthy individuals served as a control group and the mental state of the ECT patients was also compared to that of normothymic patients previously treated with ECT. ECT patients performed at a significantly lower level than normals on a battery of primarily non-memory cognitive tasks, but unilateral ECT did not cause any further impairment on these tasks. On the contrary. patients' performance improved substantially along with improvement in clinical state as well as demonstrating significant practice effects. A small subgroup of patients was tested on a battery of verbal and non-verbal memory tests. which did not reveal any apparent ECT-induced impairment. Long-term follow-up patients who had received bilateral ECT indicated that healthy controls performed rather better than both ECT and comparable non-ECT patients on a battery of memory tests. hut no ECT-induced impairment was detected.

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