Changes in Depressive Symptom Domains During Treatment with Accelerated and Conventional Repetitive Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation

The study compared the effectiveness of accelerated 5x5 repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation (rTMS) with conventional once-daily rTMS in treating major depressive disorder. The accelerated method consisted of 25 total sessions (five sessions per day over five days), while the conventional method included 30 sessions administered over six weeks. The accelerated group included 40 patients and the conventional group included 135 patients. Both methods led to similar improvements across all 14 examined depression symptom domains. The results demonstrated that accelerated 5x5 rTMS has comparable efficacy to conventional rTMS in alleviating depressive symptoms. Both methods can be considered appropriate for patients with depressive disorder presenting with various symptom profiles.