Medscape (6/23, Davenport) reported that a meta-analysis indicates “deaths directly related to electroconvulsive therapy (ECT) are rare events and seem to be decreasing in incidence.” In “the pooled analysis of more than 750,000 ECT procedures performed since the mid-1970s,” investigators found “that the rate of deaths related to ECT itself was only around two per 100,000 treatments – less than that seen with general anesthesia for surgery.” The research was presented at the 13th World Congress of Biological Psychiatry and published in Acta Psychiatrica Scandinavica.
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