TMS Watch: 2021 Clinical TMS Society Meeting: First In-Person Meeting for Interventional Psychiatry Enthusiasts.

By: Richard Bermudes, MD

Previously published in the Psychiatric News

The 2021 Clinical TMS Society Meeting and Pulses Course was held in West Palm Beach, Florida this year from June 9-12 (see box 1). This was the first in-person interventional psychiatry meeting since the start of the pandemic and subsequent shut down. 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 TMS.

The meeting had two components: the Pulses Course and the Annual Meeting. 100 participants attended the Pulses Course during the first two days. The course was 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-ever TMS machine in 1985, during which he reviewed the history and basic scientific principles of TMS.

During the second two days, over 500 TMS researchers, clinicians and thought leaders attended the Annual Meeting. The meeting featured a number of workshops and invited lectures on a range of TMS topics. General themes included new research on clinical applications for TMS for neuropsychiatric conditions other than treatment resistant depression (see box 2), as well as evolving TMS applications to optimize outcomes for patients with TRD (see box 3). 

How can TMS be more rapid and effective in severe TRD patients? With evolving applications can we raise remission rates to the equivalent of ECT and intravenous Ketamine? During the Annual Meeting, Dr. Nolan Williams presented two open label studies in patients who would qualify for deep brain stimulation and who were hospitalized utilizing the Stanford Accelerated Intelligent Neuromodulation Therapy (SAINT TMS protocol), which provided increasing hope for such outcomes. These data sets showed rapid reductions in depression and suicidality within 3 days of treatment. Remission rates at the end of the 5-day protocol were > 90%.

There are a number of in-person meetings for interventional psychiatry enthusiasts for the rest of 2021:

• • The Clinical TMS Society will hold another Pulses Course in Nashville, Tennessee September 11-12, 2021
  • American Society of Ketamine Physicians, Psychotherapists & Practitioners (ASKP) will be having their 2021 Annual Conference (virtual/in-person) in Detroit, Michigan November 4-6.
  • The 4^thInternational Brain Stimulation Meeting will be held in Charleston, South Carolina December 4-6, 2021.