Electroconvulsive therapy for treatment of intractable seizures

Abstract

We treated two children with intractable epilepsy with electroconvulsive therapy (ECT) for seizure control. One child showed a change in seizure pattern with treatment, which at greater intensity was also effective in stopping nonconvulsive status epilepticus. The other child showed a decrease in spontaneous seizure frequency during short-term treatment. These findings suggest a possible role for ECT in the management of intractable epilepsy in children who are not candidates for epileptic surgery.

Suppression and control of epileptiform activity by electrical stimulation: a review

“…Patients will usually receive 3-4 ECT treatments over a period of 6-9 days. There are conflicting reports as to whether ECT is anticonvulsant as indicated by either an increase in ECT threshold [67], [18] or a decrease in spontaneous seizure rate [13], [37]. While stimulation efficacy increases with train duration, concerns about induced cognitive defects and short-term memory loss limit stimulation to 2-s intervals.…”

Electroconvulsive therapy for new-onset super-refractory status epilepticus

“…There are only individual reports describing the use of ECT for status epilepticus over the last 30 years, 5,6 although its use was first described in the 1940s. It was not until the introduction of superrefractory status epilepticus 7 that the role of multiple exploratory therapies (those without support from systemic investigations or clinical trials including use of ketamine, hypothermia, ketogenic diet, and ECT) were added to the management protocol.…”

Refractory status epilepticus

“…Es liegen mehrere Fallberichte vor, in denen NKSE mit Hilfe der Elektrokrampftherapie durchbrochen werden konnten [25,58,79,98]. Allerdings wurde die Beendigung des SE nur in einem Fall mittels EEG dokumentiert [98].…”