[Follow-up of schizophrenic patients hospitalized for the first time in 1954 and treated with electroconvulsive therapy].

37 of 43 patients who had been hospitalised because of schizophrenia for the first time in 1954 and subjected to electroconvulsive treatment in the same year, were reexamined 30 years later in respect of course of the disease, social situation, psychopathological pattern and late complications. Whereas in 1954 the direct treatment result was assessed as full remission in 11 cases, as part remission in 16 and as not improved in 10 patients, a similar pattern was obtained in the assessment of the final stages according to the criteria of Bleuler or Ciompi, respectively, namely, a high proportion of socially inconspicuous patients and of severe residual states or permanently hospitalised cases. This result is in agreement with wellknown long-term follow-up studies and is clearly opposed to the assumption that the course of the disease is favourably influenced by drastic shock treatment.