Repetitive Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation for the Acute Treatment of Major Depressive Episodes: A Systematic Review With Network Meta-analysis.

Importance: Although several strategies of repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation (rTMS) have been investigated as treatment of major depressive disorder (MDD), their comparative efficacy and acceptability is unknown.

Objective: To establish the relative efficacy and acceptability of the different modalities of rTMS used for MDD by performing a network meta-analysis, obtaining a clinically meaningful treatment hierarchy.

Data Sources: PubMed/MEDLINE, EMBASE, PsycInfo, and Web of Science were searched up until October 1, 2016.

Study Selection: Randomized clinical trials that compared any rTMS intervention with sham or another rTMS intervention. Trials performing less than 10 sessions were excluded.

Data Extraction and Synthesis: Two independent reviewers used standard forms for data extraction and quality assessment. Random-effects, standard pairwise, and network meta-analyses were performed to synthesize data.

Main Outcomes and Measures: Response rates and acceptability (dropout rate). Remission was the secondary outcome. Effect sizes were reported as odds ratios (ORs) with 95% CIs.

Results: Eighty-one studies (4233 patients, 59.1% women, mean age of 46 years) were included. The interventions more effective than sham were priming low-frequency (OR, 4.66; 95% CI, 1.70-12.77), bilateral (OR, 3.96; 95% CI, 2.37-6.60), high-frequency (OR, 3.07; 95% CI, 2.24-4.21), θ-burst stimulation (OR, 2.54; 95% CI, 1.07-6.05), and low-frequency (OR, 2.37; 95% CI, 1.52-3.68) rTMS. Novel rTMS interventions (accelerated, synchronized, and deep rTMS) were not more effective than sham. Except for θ-burst stimulation vs sham, similar results were obtained for remission. All interventions were at least as acceptable as sham. The estimated relative ranking of treatments suggested that priming low-frequency and bilateral rTMS might be the most efficacious and acceptable interventions among all rTMS strategies. However, results were imprecise and relatively few trials were available for interventions other than low-frequency, high-frequency, and bilateral rTMS.

Conclusions and Relevance: Few differences were found in clinical efficacy and acceptability between the different rTMS modalities, favoring to some extent bilateral rTMS and priming low-frequency rTMS. These findings warrant the design of larger RCTs investigating the potential of these approaches in the short-term treatment of MDD. Current evidence cannot support novel rTMS interventions as a treatment for MDD.

Trial Registration: clinicaltrials.gov Identifier: PROSPERO CRD42015019855.