Adjunctive ketamine and electroconvulsive therapy for major depressive disorder: A meta-analysis of randomized controlled trials.
Journal of Affective Disorders May 1, 2019 Wei Zheng, Xiaohong Li, Xiao-Min Zhu et al. 57 citations
An updated meta-analysis of 17 randomized controlled trials involving 1,035 people with major depressive disorder found that adding ketamine alone to electroconvulsive therapy does not improve depressive symptoms compared with other anesthetic agents at any time point. Combining ketamine with other anesthetics showed a short-term advantage in reducing depressive symptoms early in treatment, but this benefit did not persist after the full course of ECT or at the end of the study. Most subgroup analyses confirmed the lack of significant effect. Ketamine alone increased blood pressure more than other anesthetics. Results for neurocognitive function were mixed.