The mortality rate with ECT.

ECT is a low-risk procedure, even in the older cardiac patient who is fast becoming the modal candidate for this therapy. To put the mortal risk with ECT in proper perspective, it is only necessary to note that ECT is about 10 times safer than childbirth, that approximately 6 times as many deaths annually in the U.S. are caused by lightning as by ECT, that two complications of psychotropic drug therapy in younger women-fatal myocardial infarction and fatal subarachnoid hemorrhage-virtually never occur with ECT, and that the death rate reported for ECT is an order of magnitude smaller than the spontaneous death rate in the general population.