These incredible numbers will almost certainly drop in larger trials and once more medication resistant participants are included in a study. ECT is comparable to the efficacy of this small scale trial, but their novel approach and increased dosage could yield a major improvement to TMS.
A 90% response rate is in-line with ECT on non-medication resistant patients, actually, and it's not historically out of place that TMS performs so effectively. [1] [2]
Historically, TMS has had lower response rates than ECT, though this trial seems to offer a less invasive treatment with a comparable response rate. The measured response rates of the initial trials tend to drop after testing in a larger population, but it's great to see TMS progressing with improvements identified regularly.
