Succinylcholine in electroshock treatment

Electroshock treatment not infrequently leads to vertebral fractures and other complications. Where cardiovascular or skeletal disease exists, its use though desirable, may be fraught with danger. The search for muscle relaxants to dampen the violence of the electrical convulsion has culminated in Succinylcholine. Injected intravenously as the chloride it produces a rapid paralysis of the musculature. Complete and permanent recovery occurs within a few minutes because of the quick destruction of the drug by cholinesterase. A series of 416 treatments in 46 patients is reported. Somatic pathology in 8 of these electroshock would have been contraindicated. With Succinylcholine all patients made an eventful recovery. The discomfort of Succinylcholine is slight and not sufficient to require the use of intravenous anesthesia. One death is reported but evidence indicates that this may not be attributed to Succinylcholine. Succinylcholine has no disadvantageous side-effects. Many times the clinically effective dose has been administered without prolonged apnea. In conclusion this study indicates that Succinylcholine is a very safe, simple means of improving and widening the application of the technique of electroshock

New horizons in the chemotherapy of mental disease

No Abstrac

A compact Compton backscatter X-ray source for mammography and coronary angiography

This is the final report of a three-year, Laboratory Directed Research and Development (LDRD) project at Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL). The project objective is to generate a large flux of tunable, monochromatic x-rays for use in mammography and coronary angiography. The approach is based on Compton backscattering of an ultraviolet solid-state laser beam against the high-brightness 20-MeV electron beams from a compact linear accelerator. The direct Compton backscatter approach failed to produce a large flux of x-rays due to the low photon flux of the scattering solid-state laser. The authors have modified the design of a compact x-ray source to the new Compton backscattering geometry with use of a regenerative amplifier free-electron laser. They have successfully demonstrated the production of a large flux of infrared photons and a high-brightness electron beam focused in both dimensions for performing Compton backscattering in a regenerative amplifier geometry