Mortality after electroconvulsive therapy

There are limited studies examining mortality associated with electroconvulsive therapy (ECT), and many studies do not include a control group or method to identify all patient deaths.

We aimed to evaluate the risk of death associated with ECT treatments over 30 days and 1 year.

We conducted a study analysing electronic medical record data from the Department of Veterans Affairs healthcare system between 2000 and 2017. We compared mortality among patients who received ECT with a matched group of patients created through propensity score matching.

Our sample included 123 479 individual ECT treatments provided to 8720 patients (including 5157 initial index courses of ECT). Mortality associated with individual ECT treatments was 3.08 per 10 000 treatments over the first 7 days after treatment. When comparing patients who received ECT with a matched group of mental health patients, those receiving ECT had a relative odds of all-cause mortality in the year after their index course of 0.87 (95% CI 0.79-1.11; P = 0.10), and a relative risk of death from causes other than suicide of 0.79 (95% CI 0.66-0.95; P < 0.01). The similar relative odds of all-cause mortality in the first 30 days after ECT was 1.06 (95% CI 0.65-1.73) for all-cause mortality, and 1.02 (95% CI 0.58-1.8) for all-cause mortality excluding suicide deaths.

There was no evidence of elevated or excess mortality after ECT. There was some indication that mortality may be reduced in patients receiving ECT compared with similar patients who do not receive ECT.