The incidence of psychosurgery in the United States, 1971--1973

As part of the work of the APA Task Force on Psychosurgery, the author surveyed 1,901 neurosurgeons on how many psychosurgical procedures they performed in 1971, 1972 and 1973. A total of 1.481 questionnaires were returned: 195 neurosurgeons indicated they had performed a total of 476 procedures for intractable pain and 1.039 procedures for psychiatric conditions. Excluding the procedures reported by 4 neurosurgeons who performed more than 20 psychosurgical operations in any one of the three years, the number of psychosurgical operations in 575 for the three years, which the author suggests should allay fears about the abuse of psychosurgery.