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CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 · J Neuroanaesth Crit Care 2020; 7(03): 150-153
DOI: 10.1055/s-0040-1714916
Commentary

COVID-19 Pandemic and Electroconvulsive Therapy

Abhishek Singh
1   Department of Anesthesiology, Pain Medicine and Critical Care, All India Institute of Medical Sciences, New Delhi, India
,
Puneet Khanna
1   Department of Anesthesiology, Pain Medicine and Critical Care, All India Institute of Medical Sciences, New Delhi, India
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Introduction

COVID-19 has been officially declared a pandemic by the World Health Organization.[1] In this challenging situation, the need to deliver quality care for patients afflicted with serious mental illness is even greater than before. However, the majority of electroconvulsive therapy (ECT) services have been stopped. The reason for this is mainly fear of virus transmission, unavailability of anesthetists, and shortage of drugs and personal protective equipment (PPE). Another important reason cited for closing down ECT is that it is considered as an elective intervention. Providing ECT is important as it not only results in better remission rate, but it is also life-saving for patients not taking any food or are suffering from depression, catatonia, and suicidality.[2] As rightly said by Espinoza et al, in this COVID era, “ECT is a lifesaving gem.”[3] While most of our energy, healthcare resources, and infrastructure is focused on containing the coronavirus pandemic, there is a need to extend care to those who are afflicted with a serious mental illness and require ECT. But the coronavirus pandemic has placed us at a sustained demand for healthcare infrastructure and essential community resources. Such demands lead to the development of a situation where we need to judiciously allocate our resources, equipment, and manpower for their effective utilization and eventual better outcomes. As a result, ECT, which is considered as an elective procedure, may get suspended, creating a lot of worries for clinicians as well as patients, because ECT is life-saving for some patients, while for others it is essential due to a lack of other available options. Hence, during this time of the pandemic, it is the responsibility of the anesthesiologist to develop a framework and guidelines, according to local needs and infrastructure, to perform ECT, which ensures utmost safety for patients as well as healthcare professionals.



Publication History

Article published online:
07 September 2020

© 2020. Indian Society of Neuroanaesthesiology and Critical Care. This is an open access article published by Thieme under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonDerivative-NonCommercial-License, permitting copying and reproduction so long as the original work is given appropriate credit. Contents may not be used for commercial purposes, or adapted, remixed, transformed or built upon. (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/).

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