ECT can be very, very unsafe. 70% of patients experience some form of memory loss and at least 30% of patients experience self-reported permanent memory loss. The rate of major adverse cardiac events found in a 2019 meta-analysis was 1 in 39 patients. For the people that it helps, I'm happy they've found relief, but it's a tool with significant costs and I know a fair amount of people who underwent it as children or otherwise were pressured to undergo it and I don't know any of them who have a positive impression of it.

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paytonjjones 4 hours ago | parent [-]

Yes, memory loss surrounding the hours/days of the treatment is the major side effect.

Care to share the meta-analysis? How does 1/39 compare to the base rate of those with severe depression who did not receive ECT?

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sudopsuedo 4 hours ago | parent | next [-]

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/30557212/

About 1 in 50 patients may experience a major cardiac event (or death) during the course of ECT

	▲	timr an hour ago \| parent [-]
		This isn't responsive to the parent's question, in a way that ironically underscores the point: you can tell me that "1 in 50 patients experience X", but that's meaningless, unless I know what X is in the selected population at baseline. I don't mean to pick on you. This problem is widespread in academic research.

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nightpool 4 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

The stats are from the Wikipedia page for ECT--I'm not sure about the base rate/risk ratio.