Abstract:

The Persistent auditory hallucinations may provoke the uncomfortable feeling and be dangerous according to its contents in treatment-resistant schizophrenic patients. Previous functional brain imaging studies on suditory hallucinations reported that the abnormal activations of the normal auditory pathway and the activations of the left upper temporal lobe were found while patients were hallucinationg voices.

Base on the these findings, we treated a female schizophrenic patient with persistent auditory hallucinations that were treatment-refractory with rTMS and the ECT continuously while she was on the drug treatment. The total amount of pulses applied in each trial ranged from 240 to 1000pulses. Fourteen trials were done and resulted in decrease by 30% in the subject severity of auditory hallucinations and the improvement of the affect. Two weeks after the completion of rTMS trials, nine trials of ECT were administered which leaded to complete disappearance of auditory hallucinations.

This result suggest that ECT is more effective than rTMS in treating persistent auditory hallucinations in treatment-resistant schizophrenic patients.