Introduction: Current guidelines consider electroconvulsive therapy (ECT) as a treatment of choice for some depressive disorders; however some psychiatrists are still reluctant toward using ECT as first choice treatment. This fact is probably due to its short-term deleterious effects on memory and cognition.
Objective: To investigate long-term effects of ECT on anterograde episodic memory.
Methods: Participants were assigned to three groups: 20 major depression patients receiving ECT treatment (group A), 28 major depression patients following only pharmacological therapy (group B) and 26 healthy controls (group C). Group A patients received three ECT sessions. Memory evaluation consisted of three tests: list of words, and logical memory I and II. Memory evaluation was performed before treatment (baseline) and six months post-treatment.
Results: Groups A and B performed at a similar level in baseline evaluation. Post-treatment evaluation indicated that ECT was associated with a significantly better clinical situation and improvement in all memory tests. There was also a very strong correlation between clinical improvement and memory performance.
Conclusions: According to our results, ECT was not associated with deleterious effects on anterograde episodic memory. ECT produced faster and significantly higher clinical improvement, as measured by means of Hamilton Depression Rating Scale, which also correlates with memory performance.