Luchini F, Medda P, Mariani MG, Mauri M, Toni C, Perugi G. Electroconvulsive therapy in catatonic patients: Efficacy and predictors of response. World J Psychiatr 2015; 5(2): 182-192 [PMID: 26110120 DOI: 10.5498/wjp.v5.i2.182]
Corresponding Author of This Article
Giulio Perugi, MD, Department of Experimental and Clinic Medicine, Section of Psychiatry, University of Pisa, Via Roma 67, 56100 Pisa, Italy. giulio. perugi@med.unipi.it
Research Domain of This Article
Psychiatry
Article-Type of This Article
Review
Open-Access Policy of This Article
This article is an open-access article which was selected by an in-house editor and fully peer-reviewed by external reviewers. It is distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial (CC BY-NC 4.0) license, which permits others to distribute, remix, adapt, build upon this work non-commercially, and license their derivative works on different terms, provided the original work is properly cited and the use is non-commercial. See: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/
Federica Luchini, Pierpaolo Medda, Michela Giorgi Mariani, Mauro Mauri, Cristina Toni, Giulio Perugi, Department of Experimental and Clinic Medicine, Section of Psychiatry, University of Pisa, 56100 Pisa, Italy
Cristina Toni, Giulio Perugi, Institute of Behavioural Science, G.De Lisio, 56100 Pisa, Italy
Author contributions: All authors contributed to this manuscript.
Conflict-of-interest: All the authors report no conflict of interest relevant to this work.
Open-Access: This article is an open-access article which was selected by an in-house editor and fully peer-reviewed by external reviewers. It is distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial (CC BY-NC 4.0) license, which permits others to distribute, remix, adapt, build upon this work non-commercially, and license their derivative works on different terms, provided the original work is properly cited and the use is non-commercial. See: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/
Correspondence to: Giulio Perugi, MD, Department of Experimental and Clinic Medicine, Section of Psychiatry, University of Pisa, Via Roma 67, 56100 Pisa, Italy. giulio. perugi@med.unipi.it
Telephone: +39-05-0992559 Fax: +39-05-02219787
Received: September 26, 2014 Peer-review started: September 28, 2014 First decision: November 19, 2014 Revised: February 12, 2015 Accepted: March 5, 2015 Article in press: March 9, 2015 Published online: June 22, 2015
Core Tip
Core tip: Catatonia is a treatable autonomous syndrome, frequently associated with mood disorders, but also observed in neurological, neurodevelopmental and toxic conditions. Electroconvulsive therapy (ECT) is effective in 80% to 100% of all forms of catatonia, even after pharmacotherapy with benzodiazepines has failed, and is considered first-line treatment in patients with neuroleptic malignant syndrome. Increasing the knowledge on the mechanism of action of ECT in catatonia may contribute to the development of other brain stimulation techniques, such as transcranial magnetic stimulation and deep brain stimulation. ECT response in different subtype of catatonia and efficacy of maintenance ECT in long-term prevention of recurrent catatonia deserve further research.
