Medication management during electroconvulsant therapy

Electroconvulsive therapy (ECT) has demonstrated to be highly effective and safe, even life saving for many psychiatric disorders such as major depression, bipolar disorder and schizophrenia. Most patients who require ECT are also on concurrent pharmacotherapy. As such, the objective of this article is to provide a review of the most recent literature focusing on the medications used during an ECT procedure and on the effects of concurrent psychiatric and non-psychiatric medications on the effectiveness and safety of ECT. The review also attempts to summarize the recommendations derived from existing documents to guide pharmacotherapy decisions for patients undergoing ECT. For this purpose, using electronic databases, an extensive search of the current literature was made using ECT and medications or drug classes as keywords.