Successful Electroconvulsive Therapy in a Patient With Confirmed, Symptomatic COVID-19

What is it about?

Internationally recognized guidance issued in Spring 2020 suggested that ECT should not be given to confirmed covid-19 positive patients, but this advice failed to take into account the risk/benefit balance in individual cases. We present a case of a catatonic patient who would have died without ECT, for whom the risks of general anaesthesia and ECT in the presence of active covid-19 respiratory infection, to the patient and healthcare staff, were outweighed by the risk to the patient of remaining untreated. No staff involved in the treatment of this patient developed covid-19 infection and the patient made a full recovery and remains physically and mentally well one year later.

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Why is it important?

Guidance denying healthcare to people with covid-19 infection was shortsighted and this case showed how individualized care planning produced a meaningful outcome for this patient.