Pune : Yerwada’s regional mental hospital receives an RTMS machine

Repetitive Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation (RTMS) therapy will soon be used to promptly treat patients at Regional Mental Hospital (RMH) in Yerawada who are suffering from conditions like depression and obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD).

The machine is currently undergoing installation and is priced at ₹71 lakhs.

The district planning committee’s funds were used to purchase the rTMS machine for the hospital.

The rTMS offers novel therapy that does away with the need for electric shock therapy by targeting particular brain regions with magnetic pulses.

According to a psychologist, rTMS is a method for subtly altering brain cell activity.

The psychologist went on to say that it makes use of a specialized electromagnet that produces short magnetic pulses that are much more concentrated and roughly equal in strength to the magnetic field of an MRI scanner. Patients with schizophrenia, other psychotic disorders, and chronic mental depression may benefit from the therapy.

There are currently 955 patients admitted to the RMH, 341 of whom are female and 614 of whom are male.

In addition to rTMS, the hospital now has two cutting-edge electroconvulsive therapy (ECT) machines.

According to the RMH medical superintendent, therapy sessions require moving the single ECT machine from the female ward to the male ward. Both wards will now have a single advanced ECT machine instead of the two that they previously had.

The superintendent went on to say that the ECT machine is cutting edge and that it keeps track of the heart and brain activity while the patient receives treatment.

The superintendent went on to say that patients who have not responded to initial therapies and lines of treatment will be treated with rTMS.

The medical superintendent went on to say that patients who are not well enough to undergo treatments like ECT are advised to do so. Patients with a history of seizures are not recommended for ECT, and the patients are given anaesthesia for the procedure. Patients can receive the rTMS even in the outpatient department (OPD), and they can be released in 30 minutes. Patients usually need 10 to 20 of these sessions, which last for about 20 minutes each.