In this video case, the patient is a 65-year-old male with tremor-dominant Parkinson’s disease, whose most distressing symptom is left-hand tremor, which is persistent and has rendered him unable to use his left hand and arm. The patient had developed significant dyskinesias after increasing doses of levodopa and had refused surgery for several years.
Watch video:
Mount Sinai Health System’s Department of Neurosurgery uses MRI-guided high-frequency focused ultrasound to treat essential tremor or tremor-dominant Parkinson’s disease in patients who have not responded to medication.
“While creation of small lesions in the brain to give symptom relief has been used for decades, the ability of our center to use patient-specific DTI in combination with the focused ultrasound sets this procedure apart by improving safety and effectiveness,” says Fedor (Ted) Panov, MD, Associate Professor of Neurosurgery, Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, and Director of the Adult Epilepsy Surgery Program, Mount Sinai Health System, who led the procedure.
“HiFU is a better way to make a lesion with specificity and higher accuracy. This is a novel, incisionless outpatient procedure that may be of great help to well-selected patients who are hesitant to pursue more invasive procedures,” says Dr. Panov. “We are one of the few centers able to provide such an amalgamation of technology to the benefit of those patients with essential tremor or tremor-dominant Parkinson’s disease who have not responded to medication. Additionally, the large number of patients we are treating at our center will allow for research analysis of results to continually improve the care of this population.”
The procedure was coordinated with the patient’s neurologist, Vicki Shanker, MD, Associate Professor of Neurology, Icahn Mount Sinai, and Director of the Neurology Residency Program, Mount Sinai Beth Israel and Mount Sinai West.