Electric Shock Therapy and the Mecholyl Test

rXlNKENSTElNs ' ! ' in a series of papers has reported on the response to mecholyl and its relationship to electric shock therapy (EST). On the basis of the mecholyl re-sponse, the patient is placed into one of seven categories reflecting the degree of sympathetic reactivity. In general, patients falling into Group I have the poorest prognosis for im-provement after EST, sympathetic hyper-reactivity, while those falling into Group VII have the best prognosis, sympathetic hypo-reactivity. Funkenstein reported that 96.9 per cent of his patients falling into Group VII improved.8 An earlier study by Lotsof and Yobst13 has shown that the response to mecholyl and epi-nephrine, as measured by systolic blood pres-sure changes, is rather unreliable. The mecho-lyl test was given on two occasions and the reliability (consistency) of response employ-ing rise, fall, and other changes of blood pressure were correlated. Since the correla-tions were significantly greater than zero i