Effects of oral clonidine on the hyper dynamic responded after electroconvulsive therapy

Electroconvulsive therapy (ECT) is an effective treatment of major depression and other psychological disorders especially resistant to medical therapy. ECT has some side effects such as cardiac arrhythmia, hypertension. Myocardial infarction and cerebrovascular accident. Therefore, prevention or attenuation of these hyper dynamic responses could decrease or prevent side effects, though some medications have been used for hyper dynamic responses. In this study we assessed oral clonidine (one α2 versus drug) as premedication on the hemodynamic responses of ECT.Methods and Materials: this clinical trial was designed as: randomly, double blind and cross-over study in which 37 patients of ASA class I and II were candidates for ECT in Baharan hospital of Zahedan, received one of the three regimens of treatment as: placebo,100 and 200µg of clonidine. We of course recorded heart rate (HR) and mean arterial pressure (MAP) before and after ECT. Anaesthetic method was the same for all patients and at the end we could compare the peak measured HR, and MAP with the baseline values. We found that oral clonidine could prevent tachycardia (P<0.001) and partially prevent hypertension after ECT. However, convulsion time, spontaneous breathing and recovery time was equal for all three groups. Oral clonidine by easing stress and/or painful responses can stabilize hemodynamics status specially HR after ECT. Though, the drug had no significant effect on convulsion and recovery times whatsoever. Therefore, we would put forward usage of oral clonidine as premedication for ECT particularly in patients with decreased cardiac reserve