Doctors at Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust (UK) are testing a new technique that would treat skin tremors. Parkinson disease without performing invasive brain surgery.
Send ultrasound to specific parts of the brain
About 195,000 people in France are affected by the state of essential tremor, which causes uncontrollable shaking in Parkinson’s disease. Other patients suffer from tremors because of neurological conditions like multiple sclerosis, for example.
The cause of these tremors: abnormal electrical circuits in the brain, which transmit tremors through the nervous system to the muscles.
Performed under local anesthesia, the new treatmentBritish physicians involves the precise application of thermal energy from ultrasound waves to very specific parts of the brain to break the abnormal circuit causing the tremor.
Parkinson’s tremors prevent people from living normally
Lucas Selwyn, 52, a painter and decorator in St Austell, Cornwall, has been living with a tremor for 20 years and was one of the first people to receive the treatment. For many years, the man has managed to live a relatively normal life with the tremor, but over the past five years the symptom has started to prevent him from living.
“It was particularly difficult to continue my work as a painter and decorator and I had to learn to perform my tasks using my left hand, explains the creative. Thanks to the treatment, I was able to write my name for the first time since. many years.”
The most promising anti-tremor therapies
“We anticipate that this new approach to therapy in essential tremors and other movement disorders will lead to tremendous improvements in the quality of life of patients. patients without the need for invasive, expensive, poorly tolerated and often ineffective procedures, said Professor Wladyslaw Gedroyc, consultant radiologist and principal investigator of this latest 20-patient trial.
The development of focused ultrasound techniques offers a promising tool for treating tremors, experts say. “This therapy could provide similar benefits to deep brain stimulation, but without the invasive brain surgery that involved risks of infection,” said Claire Bale, UK Parkinson’s communications and research engagement manager. United.
Read also :
Parkinson’s disease starts in the intestine