The bipolar disorder (BD) is a chronic illness, defined by recurrent episodes of mania, hipomania and depression. BD causes alterations in the functioning and the quality of life (QL). The prevalence of BD in the life span is 1.3%. The bipolar depression is the episode most related to suicidal risk, prescence of recurrent episodes and the worsening in the QL.
The repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation (rTMS) has the potential to modulate selectively the activity of brain areas in the regulatory circuits of mood such as the prefrontal dorsolateral cortex.
Objective: to evaluate the effectiveness of rTMS vs antidepressive medication in patients with bipolar depression.
Materials and Methods: the experimental study included 21 subjects were randomly assigned to receive either rTMS (N=10) or selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor (N=11). The rTMS consisted of 15 sessions, one per day, repetition rate of 1 Hz or 5 Hz. Participants in the study were outpatients, aged 18- 60 years, diagnosed with BD type I or II during the depression phase. Changes in the severity of affective, anxious and QL symptoms were measured with scales.
Results: it was observed a significant reduction in the depression and anxiety symptoms in both groups, not finding any difference between the improvement with rTMS vs SSRI (p=.49). These results were also obtained with the scores of QL.
Conclusions: this is the first study that applies rTMS in bipolar depression vs SSRI measuring the QL. We found that de rTMS is an effective treatment for bipolar depression.