Deep Brain Stimulation an effective treatment for Parkinson's
A study in this week's issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association suggests that deep brain stimulus of either of two brain areas (the subthalamic nucleus or globus pallidus) is more effective than the current best medical treatment for Parkinson's Disease. Patients were randomly divided into three groups: two received deep brain stimulation (DBS), and the third worked with movement disorder neurologists. Seventy-one percent of DBS patients reported significant improvement in symptoms, compared to thirty-two percent of the meical treatment patients. The DBS reported, on average, 4.5 hours more symptom-free time ("on" time); the medical treatment group did not report any change in "on" time. The DBS patients also reported improvements in their quality of life. However, they also experienced more adverse events than the medical treatment group, including one death from cerebral hemorrhage.
This is the third story we've posted in the past several months indicating that DBS is an effective treatment for various conditions; previous studies investigated its impact on depression and obsessive-compulsive disorder.
You can read more here.
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