Deep Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation: A New Solution to Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder

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New positive data from a BrainsWays Ltd study on patients with obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) showed the efficacy of deep transcranial magnetic stimulation (dTMS) with the H7-coil in real world practices.¹ The data were published in Journal of Psychiatric Research.²

“This publication further validates the success we have continued to see amongst obsessive-compulsive disorder patients treated with deep TMS, providing hope for the 42% of OCD patients who are treatment-resistant and arming providers with more treatment options than ever before,” Tendler said exclusively to Psychiatric Times.

The study, conducted across 22 clinical sites, treated 219 participants with the H7-coil dTMS system, the first non-invasive medical device approved by the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for the treatment of OCD. According to the data, 58% of those who completed the 29-session course of therapy achieved response, and 73% of patients, some of whom did and did not complete the full course of therapy, achieved response at least once before concluding treatment. On the Yale Brown Obsessive Compulsive Scale (Y-BOCS), response to treatment was defined as 30% reduction at least.

“The compelling study results underscore how the BrainsWay Deep TMS system provides patients suffering from this complicated, hard-to-treat disease with hope through a non-invasive treatment option that augments existing OCD therapeutic approaches, such as medication and cognitive behavioral therapy,” Tendler said further.

The study concluded that improvement in OCD symptoms usually occurred within 20 sessions and extending the treatment course resulted in continued reduction, proving dTMS is a valuable potential treatment course for patients with OCD.

References

1. BrainsWays Ltd. BrainsWay Announces Publication of New Real-World OCD Data for its Deep TMS System in Journal of Psychiatric Research. News release. GlobeNewswire. November 11, 2020. https://www.globenewswire.com/news-release/2020/11/11/2124628/0/en/BrainsWay-Announces-Publication-of-New-Real-World-OCD-Data-for-its-Deep-TMS-System-in-Journal-of-Psychiatric-Research.html​

2. Roth Y, Tendler A, Arikan, MA, Vidrine R, et al. Real-world efficacy of deep TMS for obsessive-compulsive disorder: Post-marketing data collected from twenty-two clinical sites. Journal of Psychiatric Research. November 4, 2020. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0022395620310657#​