Deep brain therapy effective in early Parkinson’s

03/2013

A 2-year trial involving 251 patients with Parkinson's disease and early motor complications (mean age, 52 years; mean duration of disease, 7.5 years) has found that those given deep brain stimulation surgery significantly improved their quality of life, motor disability, activities of daily living, levodopa-induced motor complications, and time with good mobility and no dyskinesia. Those given normal medical therapy, on the other hand, declined or at best got no worse. Serious adverse events related to surgical implantation or the neurostimulation device occurred in 18% of patients.

“The study has confirmed the best medical practice for a person with Parkinson’s disease is to perform DBS surgery around 4 to 7 years into the condition, as opposed to waiting until the medications stop working.”

http://www.futurity.org/health-medicine/deep-brain-therapy-effective-in-early-parkinsons/

[3321] Schuepbach, W. M. M., Rau J., Knudsen K., Volkmann J., Krack P., Timmermann L., et al.
(2013).  Neurostimulation for Parkinson's Disease with Early Motor Complications.
New England Journal of Medicine. 368(7), 610 - 622.

Related News

A certain level of mental decline in the senior years is regarded as normal, but some fortunate few don’t suffer from any decline at all.

Previous research has found that carriers of the so-called

Obesity has been linked to cognitive decline, but a new study involving 300 post-menopausal women has found that higher BMI was associated with higher cognitive scores.

In the last five years, three studies have linked lower neighborhood socioeconomic status to lower cognitive function in older adults. Neighborhood has also been linked to self-rated health, cardiovascular disease, and mortality.

A telephone survey of around 17,000 older women (average age 74), which included questions about memory lapses plus standard cognitive tests, found that getting lost in familiar neighborhoods was highly associated with cognitive impairment that might indicate Alzheimer’s.

The very large and long-running Women's Health Initiative study surprised everyone when it produced its finding that hormone therapy generally increased rather than decreased stroke risk as well as other health problems.

Research has shown that younger adults are better decision makers than older adults — a curious result. A new study tried to capture more ‘real-world’ decision-making, by requiring participants to evaluate each result in order to strategize the next choice.

In a study involving 115 seniors (average age 81), those who participated in a six-week, 12-session memory training program significantly improved their verbal memory.

Following a 1994 study that found that errorless learning was better than trial-and-error learning for amnesic patients and older adults, errorless learning has been widely adopted in the rehabilitation industry.

In the study, 18 children (aged 7-8), 20 adolescents (13-14), and 20 young adults (20-29) were shown pictures and asked to decide whether it was a new picture or one they had seen earlier.

Pages

Subscribe to Latest newsSubscribe to Latest newsSubscribe to Latest health newsSubscribe to Latest news