Prefrontal repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation as add on treatment in depression.

García-Toro, M; Pascual-Leone, A; Romera, M; González, A; Micó, J; Ibarra, O; Arnillas, H; Capllonch, I et al. · J Neurol Neurosurg Psychiatry · 2001

rct · Level II

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Abstract

A growing number of studies report antidepressant effects of repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation (rTMS) in patients with major depression. The hypothesis that high frequency (20 Hz) rTMS (HF-rTMS) may speed up and strengthen the therapeutic response to sertraline in MD was tested. Twenty eight patients who had not yet received medication for the present depressive episode (n=12) or had failed a single trial of an antidepressant medication (n=16) were started on sertraline and randomised to receive either real of sham HF-rTMS. HF-rTMS was applied to the left dorsolateral prefrontal area in daily sessions (30 trains of 2 s, 20-40 s intertrain interval, at 90% motor threshold) on 10 consecutive working days. The results suggest that in this patient population, HF-rTMS does not add efficacy over the use of standard antidepressant medication.

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