Cost-utility Analysis of Maintenance rTMS for Treatment-resistant Depression

TRD is associated with enormous social, economic, and personal costs. In literature, psychosocial and pharmacological interventions showed limited one year long-term efficacy in terms of relapse (only 10% of sustained remission at one-year follow-up actually) and quality of life due to refractoriness, observance and adverse effects. In the recent years the field of non-invasive brain stimulation became more mature with an increasing level of evidence reaching Level 1 for rTMS as curative treatment for depression in international guidelines. It is a safe and well tolerated treatment but with still high relapse rate at 6 month and one year (comparable to those former described for ECT). mTMS is a promising tool (as it was proven for ECT) to achieve sustained response several month after treatment in a significant proportion of patients. Little is known about its long-term economic and social benefit which is a crucial question given its time consuming nature. To date there is no large Randomized Clinical Trial (RCT) assessing the long-term health economic interest or adjuvant mTMS compared to treatment as usual (TAU) alone in unipolar TRD . This study is a double-blind randomized controlled trial aiming at determining a 12 month cost-utility analysis, according to collective perspective, of two different modalities of rTMS (systematic mTMS or curative rTMS in case of relapse) for TRD compared to TAU alone. The secondary aims are to describe 24 month cost-utility, longitudinal clinical issues in terms of mood and quality of life, prognosis factors, as well as TAU actual strategies in that population.