Fighting Back Against Parkinsons Disease

One of my moms really good friends (actually I would call her a family friend) was diagnosed with Parkinson's disease in 2010 and has been dealing with the debilitating symptoms since then. Most of them were held at bay with medications, but that only lasted so long. Not to mention the nasty side effects like anxiety and facial distortions. It became too much so she opted to go to the University of Minnesota to hear about a somewhat new procedure called DBS. Deep Brain Stimulation is best left to be explained by the experts...

DBS is a procedure of precision. With guidance from scans and neurologists trained in identifying deep brain structures using a technique call microelectrode mapping, a neurosurgeon places a lead in a targeted area of a patient’s brain to alter his or her symptoms. The lead connects to an implantable pulse generator—“a pacemaker for the brain,” Vitek says—which is implanted under the patient’s skin and delivers electrical stimulation to the brain.

“What we’re doing is affecting circuitry in the brain that controls movement and has gone awry, eliminating the symptom,” explains Park, an assistant professor of neurosurgery in the Medical School and a MnDRIVE Neuromodulation Scholar.

So after going through the surgery by some of the best in the business, she says that 85% of her symptoms have gone away, and the anxiety has disappeared. She is definitely on the up & up.

I think something just as cool as this, is that the potential for this treatment expands beyond just Parkinson's. Here's what M Health neurologist Jerrold Vitek, M.D., Ph.D., has to say about other possibilities...

“I would say that any circuit disorder could be treatable with DBS,” he says. “Depression. Addiction. Epilepsy. Pain. Potentially even Alzheimer’s. I think the field of DBS is wide open.”

"Michael C. Park, M.D., Ph.D., and Jerrold Vitek, M.D., Ph.D., continue to improve DBS outcomes through their team’s use of up-and-coming technology."

Technology continues to amaze and inspire me, and the best part is I get to see the results in real life, with people I know benefiting from it.

What do you think will be medically possible in the next 5 years? 10? 50?

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