Safety Of The Thymatron® Ect Device; Risk Of Brain Injury - Somatics Thymatron System IV User Manual

Thymatron System IV Instructions for Use
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The authors hypothesized but did not establish a cause of the low efficacy.
Ranjkesh et al (2005) randomly assigned 39 DSM-IV patients with major depression to receive courses of 8
bifrontal, bitemporal, or right unilateral ECT with a Thymatron® DGx ECT device. Blindly-obtained Hamilton
Depression scale ratings at baseline and after the 8th ECT revealed 73% improvement overall.
In Sackeim et al. (1993), a study that did not did not use a Thymatron device, 59% of patients who responded to
ECT relapsed within twelve months.
Tran et al (2017) presented the case of a 25-year-old woman hospitalized for a major depressive episode and
suicidality in the context of bipolar 1 disorder, whose symptoms fully remitted with 1 ECT with a Thymatron®
device.
Williams et al (2008) used a Thymatron® DGx ECT device to administer 1.5 times threshold bitemporal ECT to
515 patients with DSM-IV unipolar major depression, obtaining a 68% reduction in Hamilton Depression scale
scores after treatment. Remission occurred in 329 patients (64%) and not in 186.
In Winokur, et al. (1990), a study conducted before Thymatron devices were available and when sine wave ECT
devices were common, patients experienced more rehospitalizations after ECT than matched patients who did
not receive ECT. The authors did not establish a cause.
SAFETY OF THE THYMATRON® ECT DEVICE

RISK OF BRAIN INJURY

Bai T et al. (2019) studied 61 depressed patients receving ECT with a Thymatron® System IV device compared
with 23 healthy controls. ECT was found to increase local activity of the dorsomedial prefrontal cortex and
enhanced connectivity with the posterior cingulate cortex that was positively correlated with clinical
improvement. These findings support the functional plasticity of the dorsomedial prefrontal cortex and its
reorganization by ECT that may underlie its antidepressant effect. The study reported no signs of injury.
Bouckaert et al. (2016) obtained structural magnetic resonance images in 88 severely depressed elderly patients
who received courses of ECT with a Thymatron® System IV device. Following ECT there was a significant
improvement in depression scale scores, a significant but short-lived increase in hippocampal volume, and no
change in serum levels of brain-derived neurotrophic factor. The authors concluded that ECT-induced
hippocampal growth is a transient phenomenon possibly related to ECT-induced normalization of physical
activity levels. They reported no signs of injury.
Cano et al. (2017) studied 12 patients with treatment-resistant depression who received bilateral ECT with a
Thymatron® System IV device and compared them with 10 healthy controls on high-resolution structural MRI
and hippocampal metabolite concentrations before and after a course of treatment. ECT-induced regional gray
matter volume increases in the left medial temporal lobe revealed a significant positive association with clinical
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