Danish hospital halves EST (electro-shock therapy) procedures:
This article was originally published in Clinica
Executive Summary
The number of electro-shock therapy (EST) treatments at the district hospital of Vordingborg has fallen dramatically over the past five years, says the regional government office of Storstrom in the south-east of Denmark. Initially the hospital had been criticised for carrying out too many EST procedures after a governmental inspection on June 29 1998. The number of procedures has dropped from a total of 616 in 1996 to 316 in 2000. The hospital is expecting the number to fall still further in 2001. In 1996 a discrepancy arose in the number of procedures undertaken, whereby the north part of the hospital carried out five times as many treatments as the south. A quality assurance programme has since unified treatment strategies at the hospital.