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The "resurgence" of ELECTROSHOCK THERAPY
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Fort Myers, Florida (News-Press) -- The patients are rolled on gurneys into a small screened-off area at Park Royal Hospital every 15 minutes with assembly line regularity.
One is a woman in her 60s, who, like the others, gets a momentary jolt of electricity sent through her head, causing a brain seizure and her body to tense for several seconds. The hope: That this treatment - the electroconvulsive, or "electro-shock," therapy - will ease the symptoms of her bipolar disorder that has so far not responded well to drugs.
The procedure, one of thousands performed at Park Royal since the 76-bed hospital opened last year, has worked on the woman in the past, says Dr. Ivan Mazzorana, who performs all of them on patients here. And, he said, it's likely to do so again.
These days, the treatment goes by its more clinical-sounding acronym, "ECT."
"When you bring it up, most people say, 'Oh my God! Not ECT, that's something from the past,'" Mazzorana said. "It's a very simple procedure, safer, and it's a lot quicker than the medication."
Electroconvulsive therapy today is a procedure widely accepted by the medical community and one, absent a rare court order, that is done with patient consent. But it is also a treatment that lingers in the public imagination as a crude medical holdover almost as dated as bloodletting. Many outside of psychiatry are surprised to learn that the procedure still exists at all.
Despite that, ECT has seen a resurgence at many U.S. health centers in recent decades, experts say, and is now doing a brisk business here in Southwest Florida.
Park Royal, the only inpatient psychiatric hospital in Lee County, has already treated nearly 200 people with ECT, most receiving multiple treatments. The number represents roughly 10 percent of all Park Royal's admissions since it opened in early 2012.
The hospital is a for-profit facility owned by the Tennessee-based Acadia Healthcare Co.
ECT had been widely available before Lee County's last inpatient psychiatric hospital, Charter Glade, closed in 2000. Separately, one physician had provided ECT services in Collier County before retiring several years ago.
Otherwise in Southwest Florida, Riverside Behavioral Health in Punta Gorda offers the treatment, though it performs far fewer than Park Royal. Riverside's Dr. Bernardo Arias estimates his facility performs 150 treatments a year. Park Royal estimates it has performed more than 2,000 in the last year.
[link to www.wtsp.com]
I'm so not surprised at this. Please don't miss the comments after the article.
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