Mean hospital stay and treatment with electroconvulsive therapy

Introduction. The objective is to analyze if the mean hospital stay is less than the episodes or not in which electroconvulsive therapy (ECT) is applied. Methods. With a retrospective design, we studied a sample of 30 patients in whom ECT was applied between 1996 and 2001. These patients were suffering a disorder for which ECT has been shown to be effective (schizophrenia, bipolar disorder and major depression). Each one of the episodes (n = 185) of these patients was studied, comparing the length of stay in the hospital in these patients in which ECT was applied (n = 135) with those where it was not (n = 50). Statistical analysis was carried out by non-parametric Mann-Whitney-U tests. The descriptive level of statistical significance was established at p < 0.05. Results. This work shows statistically significant differences between the treatment groups (p = 0.000), the length of stay being longer when ECT is applied.