FRONTAL LOBOTOMY 1936-1956 A FOLLOW-UP STUDY OF 3000 PATIENTS FROM ONE TO TWENTY YEARS

WALTER FREEMANAuthors Info & Affiliations

Publication: American Journal of Psychiatry

Volume 113, Number 10

https://doi.org/10.1176/ajp.113.10.877

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Abstract

Three thousand lobotomy patients have been compared in 3 different categories: (1) Prefrontal lobotomy versus transorbital lobotomy; (2) private patients versus state hospital patients; (3) according to personality reaction type, schizophrenic, affective and psychoneurotic.

Follow-up studies reveal that following prefrontal lobotomy some 70% of schizophrenics, 80% of affectives, and 90% of psychoneurotics are functioning outside of the hospital in the 5-to 10-year period. This figure is twice as high in private patients as it is in state hospital patients.

Transorbital lobotomy is safer, more effective (with the exception of the hallucinated schizophrenic patients), and far more applicable to the problem of the state hospital, than is prefrontal lobotomy. [see table 2 in source pdf]

Multiple operations have been performed in about 1 patient in 10, with eventual satisfactory results in a third of them. When it is considered that this fraction amounts to 100 patients out of the hospital, this figure acquires significance.

Hospitals that select patients for operation with a view to release, and that encourage the relatives of patients to participate actively in the management of convalescence, enjoy a much higher percentage of released patients than do those that employ lobotomy more for the control of disturbed behavior.

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Information & Authors

Information

Published In

American Journal of Psychiatry

Volume 113 • Number 10 • April 1957

Pages: 877 - 886

PubMed: 13402981

History

Published in print: April 1957

Published online: 1 April 2006

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WALTER FREEMAN

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FRONTAL LOBOTOMY 1936-1956 A FOLLOW-UP STUDY OF 3000 PATIENTS FROM ONE TO TWENTY YEARS

Abstract

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