News: New study suggests ketamine as a clinically valid alternative to ECT

A new study conducted by the New England Journal of Medicine suggests that ketamine may be a clinically viable option for patients with severe depression, Medscape reports.

The study represents the first large-scale investigation of its kind, as prior studies had only possessed a small pool of ketamine patients and those patients had been drawn only from a single psychiatric center.

Electroconvulsive therapy (ECT) has been the “gold standard for treating severe depression for over 80 years,” said Amit Anand, MD, and director of Psychiatry Translational Clinical Trials at Mass General Brigham.

ECT, however, also “requires anesthesia, can be socially stigmatizing, and is associated with memory problems following the treatment.” Ketamine, on the other hand, lacks these negative side effects and is, as the study suggested, clinically on par with ECT.

The treatment was conducted over the course of three weeks, during which time patients received either three ECT treatments per week or two ketamine treatments per week.

"The take-home message right now is that if somebody is being referred for ECT, the treating clinician should think of offering ketamine first," Anand said.

According to the study, after the three-week period, 55.4% of ketamine patients and 41.2% of ECT patients responded well to treatment.

Editor’s Note: You can read the New England Journal of Medicine article here and the Medscape article here.