The safety of the electroconvulsive therapy-aripiprazole combination: Four case reports

In clinical practice, a proportion of patients with psychotic or mood disorders are treated with electroconvulsive therapy (ECT) while receiving concomitantly antipsychotic and/or other psychotropic agents. Aripiprazole is a second-generation antipsychotic that seems to have a favorable side-effect profile. However, to the best of our knowledge, there are, as yet, no available reports oil the safety of ECT-aripiprazole combination. We report the cases of 4 female inpatients-3 suffering from major depression and I from schizophrenia-who underwent ECT-1 of them twice-while receiving aripiprazole (10-15 mg/d), as part of their regimen. I it all cases, the combination was well tolerated and only minimal side effects were reported.