FRONTAL LOBOTOMY 1936-1956 A FOLLOW-UP STUDY OF 3000 PATIENTS FROM ONE TO TWENTY YEARS
Abstract
Three thousand lobotomy patients have been compared in 3 different categories: (1) Prefrontal lobotomy versus transorbital lobotomy; (2) private patients versus state hospital patients; (3) according to personality reaction type, schizophrenic, affective and psychoneurotic.
Follow-up studies reveal that following prefrontal lobotomy some 70% of schizophrenics, 80% of affectives, and 90% of psychoneurotics are functioning outside of the hospital in the 5-to 10-year period. This figure is twice as high in private patients as it is in state hospital patients.
Transorbital lobotomy is safer, more effective (with the exception of the hallucinated schizophrenic patients), and far more applicable to the problem of the state hospital, than is prefrontal lobotomy. [see table 2 in source pdf]
Multiple operations have been performed in about 1 patient in 10, with eventual satisfactory results in a third of them. When it is considered that this fraction amounts to 100 patients out of the hospital, this figure acquires significance.
Hospitals that select patients for operation with a view to release, and that encourage the relatives of patients to participate actively in the management of convalescence, enjoy a much higher percentage of released patients than do those that employ lobotomy more for the control of disturbed behavior.
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