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Updated: May 8, 2025
Treating Clinical Depression with Repetitive Deep Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation Using the Brainsway H1-coil
Published on: October 4, 2016
Repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation: an effective treatment for resistant depressive episodes in the elderly
Ghina Harika-Germaneau1,2,3, Issa Wassouf1,4, Damien Doolub1,2,3
1Unité de Recherché Clinique Intersectorielle en Psychiatrie à Vocation Régionale du Centre Hospitalier Henri Laborit, Poitiers, France.
Objectives:
To evaluate the effectiveness of repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation (rTMS) in older (≥60 years) versus younger (<60 years) patients with treatment-resistant depression (TRD), and to determine whether age affects clinical outcomes in a naturalistic clinical setting.
Method:
A retrospective analysis was conducted on 272 patients with TRD treated with rTMS at a tertiary psychiatric hospital. Depression severity was assessed at baseline, end-of-treatment (V1), and one-month follow-up (V2) using the Montgomery-Åsberg Depression Rating Scale (MADRS) and the Beck Depression Inventory (BDI). Response (≥50% MADRS reduction) and remission (MADRS ≤10) rates were calculated. Repeated measures ANOVA and logistic regression were used to examine the influence of age and treatment protocol.
Results:
Both age groups showed significant improvement in depressive symptoms. Older adults had higher remission rates at V1 (36% vs. 23%, p = 0.033), although this difference was no longer significant at V2. No interaction between age and protocol was observed. Female sex was the only significant predictor of remission at V2 (OR = 14.25, p = 0.021). Sensitivity analyses treating age as a continuous variable yielded consistent findings.
Conclusion:
rTMS is an effective treatment for TRD in both older and younger adults. Older patients respond comparably to younger ones, challenging concerns about age-related reductions in neuromodulation efficacy. These findings support the use of rTMS in late-life depression without major protocol adjustments and underscore the need for future studies examining personalized treatment parameters and psychosocial moderators of response.
