[SPECT study of a group of patients with severe recurrent depression].

Abstract

Objective: In this work with the SPECT we tried to define the most possible the disfuntions that could exist in a group of patients with severe recurrent depression.

Material and method: The sample is compound for fifteen patients (2 men and 13 woman) diagnosed of recurrent depression according CIE-10 with equal distribution between melancholic depressions and depressions with psychotic symptoms congruents and not congruents with the state of mood. The mean age of the group is of 55.4 years. All the patients have been studied with de SPECT (Tc-HMPAO) during the first week of hospitalization. The severity of the depressive syndrome was studied with the questionnaire for depression of Beck and the state of anxiety was studied with the questionnaire of anxiety of Spielberger. All the patients were severes depressives and anxious according to the questionnaires.

Results: We appreciated disfunction, hypocaptation, in frontoorbital zones, well bilateral (mainly in recurrent depressions with psychotic symptoms) or only in the left frontal side (areas of Brodmann 10 and 11) mainly in recurrent melancholies. We also found that in almost all the patients existed hypocaptation in the left angular circunvolution (areas of Brodmann 37 and 39). In the recurrent melancholies the localization of the hypocaptation is fundamentally posterior parietotemporal in the left side.

Conclusions: In the recurrent serious depressions the hypocaptation is located to prefrontal level with tendency to bilateral being and/or posterior parietotemporal left side, that in the melancholies the localization of the hypocaptation is fundamentally posterior parietotemporal in the left side and it could imply that when the severity clinic gets complicated with psychotic symptoms the hypocaptation is located in a bigger number of places (prefrontal and left posterior parietotemporal) in relation to what it happens in the melancholic depressions. It seems to exist relationship between depressive and anxious severity and localization of the hypocaptation.