About TMS

Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation (TMS)

TMS Therapy uses a highly focused pulsed magnetic field to stimulate nerve cells in the area of the brain thought to control mood. TMS Therapy is performed by prescription only in a psychiatrist’s office under their supervision while you remain awake and alert.

NeuroStar TMS Therapy® is an outpatient procedure. The typical treatment course consists of 5 treatments per week over a 4-6 week period for 20-30 treatments. Each treatment session lasts approximately 40 minutes.

Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation

Since the 1980s, transcranial magnetic stimulation has been used to study the nerve fibers that carry information about movements from the brain to the spinal cord and onto the muscles. In the late 1990s physicians began to explore the therapeutic potential of transcranial magnetic stimulation for the treatment of a variety of diseases, with depression being the most thoroughly studied to date. Since then, more than 30 randomized, controlled trials studying transcranial magnetic stimulation as a treatment for depression have been published by investigators throughout the world1,2.

NeuroStar TMS (transcranial magnetic stimulation) Therapy was recently FDA-cleared for patients suffering from depression who have not achieved satisfactory improvement from prior antidepressant medications.* Using pulsed magnetic fields, transcranial magnetic stimulation therapy stimulates the part of the brain thought to be involved with mood regulation. TMS Therapy is a short outpatient procedure, performed in your psychiatrist’s office under their supervision while you remain awake and alert. The typical initial course of treatment is about 37 minutes daily over 4-6 weeks. Learn how it works.

About NeuroStar TMS Therapy

The NeuroStar TMS (transcranial magnetic stimulation) system, developed by Neuronetics, is the first and only non-systemic and non-invasive depression treatment cleared by the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for the treatment of patients with major depression who have not benefited from prior antidepressant treatment.*

NeuroStar TMS Therapy is:

Non-invasive, meaning that it does not involve surgery. It does not require any anesthesia or sedation, as the patient remains awake and alert during the treatment.
Non-systemic, meaning that it is not taken by mouth and does not circulate in the bloodstream throughout the body.
References:

Schutter, D. (2009). “Antidepressant efficacy of high-frequency transcranial magnetic stimulation over the left dorsolateral prefrontal cortex in double-blind sham-controlled designs: a meta-analysis.” Psychological Medicine 39: 65-75.
Data on file.