Pain and Sleep Medicine Center, Rapid Anti-depression Center, The Affiliated Hospital of Shandong Second Medical University, Weifang, China; Medical School, University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, 100012, China; Institute for lnnovation Diagnosis & Treatment in Anesthesiology, Shandong Second Medical University, Weifang, China; Department of Anesthesiology, University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine, Pittsburgh, USA; Brain Disease Institute & Department of Anesthesiology for the Integrated Traditional Chinese and Western Medicine Hospital, Southern Medical University, Guangzhou, China. Electronic address: anjianxiong@yeah.net.
A multimodal therapy combining esketamine with dexmedetomidine patient-controlled sleep (PCSL) was associated with sustained improvements in depressive symptoms and sleep quality over 6 months in 233 patients with treatment-resistant depression. Antidepressant response rates were 62% at 1 month, 59.73% at 3 months, and 58.49% at 6 months. Use of PCSL was linked to response at all time points, while additional esketamine during follow-up was associated with response at 3 months but not statistically significantly at 6 months. Age and disease duration also influenced response. No serious adverse events occurred.