TMS Outperforms Medication in Head-to-Head Study of Treatment-Resistant Depression

GoogleDeepMind / Pexels

A multicenter trial finds advantages for transcranial magnetic stimulation in a direct comparison.

Key points

• TMS has been found to be effective for treating clinical depression and other conditions.
• Prior data and clinical experience suggest that TMS may be more effective than ongoing medication management.
• Recent work comparing medication and TMS finds that TMS is more effective than multiple medication changes.

Transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS, or “rTMS” for “repetitive TMS”) received an indication for treating major depressive disorder in 2008. Since then, research and clinical experience with TMS has been growing, and recent applications include rapid “accelerated” TMS for depression [1] and indications for obsessive-compulsive disorder, depression in teens 15 years of age and older (approved currently with NeuroStar TMS), and for smoking cessation.

Photo by Author

Briefly (see reference 1 below for more detail), TMS applies a fluctuating magnetic…