2021 Educational Opportunities to Learn More About Interventional Treatments, Research

The 2021 Clinical TMS Society Meeting and Pulses Course were held in West Palm Beach, Fla., in June. This was the first in-person interventional psychiatry meeting since the start of the pandemic. The majority of attendees had completed vaccination, and overall, they expressed a sense of gratitude and relief in being able to socialize and network in person while attending excellent lectures and workshops on current and evolving clinical applications of transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS).

The meeting had two two-day components: The Pulses Course and the Annual Meeting. About 100 participants attended the Pulses Course. The course consisted of a series of lectures and demonstrations on the clinical administration of TMS and offered practical recommendations for implementing TMS in a clinical practice. Lecture topics ranged from a review of TMS for treatment-resistant depression (TRD) to how to negotiate the increasing complexity of insurance coverage for TMS. Attendees also had the opportunity to participate in a virtual lecture by Prof. Anthony Barker, designer of the first TMS machine in 1985. He reviewed the history and basic scientific principles of TMS.

More than 500 TMS researchers, clinicians, and thought leaders attended the Annual Meeting. The meeting featured a number of workshops and invited lecturers on a range of TMS topics. General themes included new research on clinical applications for TMS for neuropsychiatric conditions other than TRD (see box “Expanding Indications for TMS”), as well as evolving TMS applications to optimize outcomes for patients with TRD (see box “Optimizing Outcomes in Patients With Treatment-Resistant Depression”).

How can TMS be more rapid and effective in severe TRD patients? With evolving applications, can we raise remission rates to the equivalent of electroconvulsive therapy and intravenous ketamine? During the Annual Meeting, Nolan Williams, M.D., presented two open-label studies of patients who had very severe TRD (that is, would qualify for deep brain stimulation) utilizing the Stanford Accelerated Intelligent Neuromodulation Therapy (SAINT TMS) protocol. These datasets showed rapid reductions in depression and suicidality within three days of treatment. Remission rates at the end of the five-day protocol were > 90%.

There are a number of in-person meetings for psychiatrists who want to learn more about new developments in interventional treatments: