PREFRONTAL LOBOTOMY AND TRANSORBITAL LEUCOTOMY: A COMPARATIVE STUDY OF 175 PATIENTS
F. A. FREYHAN M. D.
1. Favorable results with transorbital leucotomy approximate those with lobotomy.
2. Death, undesirable personality changes, and postoperative convulsions were minimal with transorbital leucotomy in contrast with lobotomy.
3. Psychosurgery should be of a type which causes the least cerebral damage.
4. The high rate of psychosurgical failures, the absence of valid prognostic criteria, and the frequency of relapses preclude clear concepts on the specificity of therapeutic effectiveness as well as on the role of the frontal lobes in the psychopathology.
5. Course and pattern of the schizophrenic psychoses seem to be of great prognostic significance.
6. The therapeutic benefits can be dramatic in individual cases but are rather limited on the whole. It seems desirable to narrow the range of applicability still further in order to obtain more satisfactory results.
