Doctors of Apollo Hospitals have turned to advanced ‘brain sensing’ technology in Deep Brain Stimulation (DBS) for patients with Parkinson’s disease.
“We are in the era of precision DBS,” said Vijayashankar Paramanandam, neurologist, Movement Disorders and DBS specialist, Apollo Hospitals. The best candidates for DBS included patients with tremors and difficulty in walking with at least four years of symptoms and four months of motor complications.
The use of advanced brain sensing technologies help in individualised monitoring for effect that maximises therapeutic outcome, he said. He added that it could help improve the condition of patients who have symptoms such as tremors, rigidity, slowness in activities of daily living, dyskinesia. It could also help reduce the medication.
The advanced movement disorders team at Apollo Hospitals performed five DBS surgeries last month. This included four patients with Parkinson’s and one with dystonia, according to a press release.
Arvind Sukumaran, senior consultant neurosurgeon, Epilepsy/Functional Neurosurgeon, said DBS was a well-established therapy for patients with Parkinson’s disease.
“The procedure involves placing two electrodes deep into the targeted region (of the brain) using advanced computer-aided trajectory planning and stereotactic machinery. The patient will be awake and responding,” he said.
Phase two
“The second phase of the procedure involves placing the battery in the chest. The stimulation is started two weeks later,” he added.
He added that when compared to medications, DBS provided long-lasting recovery.
In this, a wire that travels from under the skin connects the pacemaker-like device to the electrodes inside the brain. The electrical pulses from the device modify the electrical activity of the affected areas of the brain to produce the desired effect and improve the symptoms. An external programmer is used to adjust and deliver electrical stimulation to the brain.
V.R. Roopesh Kumar, senior consultant and lead — neurosurgery, said there had been tremendous improvement in neurosciences when compared to where it was 30 years ago.
Preetha Reddy, vice-chairperson of Apollo Hospitals Group, said in the release that the hospital had been performing DBS for 14 years and it was a well-established therapy for patients diagnosed with advanced Parkinson’s disease and was now used for many other neurological indications with good success. Venkatachalam, director of medical services, Apollo Hospitals also spoke.
