Chapters Transcript Video Focused Ultrasound vs DBS MRI guided focus ultrasound is really an innovative technology. So focus ultrasound takes uh about 1000 beams of ultrasound energy and focuses them to a specific spot deep in the brain that is dysfunctional in patients with tremor. So focus ultrasound is used uh right now to treat uh tremor i their essential tremor or Parkinson's tremor, which is uh tremor predominant Parkinson's disease. So the focus ultrasound procedure begins with the patient coming into our uh MRI suite. Uh And we first uh put a frame uh on the patient. And so uh the frame is placed um by um uh one of us neurosurgeons. And uh that's just make sure that, that uh we can accurately target the ultrasound beams to the uh the target in question, which is the the vim in the thalamus. Once the uh the frame is placed, we take the patient to the MRI Suite and the entire treatment is done in the MRI suite while the patient is undergoing real time, MRI S. And so the procedure itself in the MRI takes about an hour and once we line up the focus ultrasound beams to the target, the vim and then essentially, we give ultrasound energy. Um, and the whole treatment time for the ultrasound energy is typically less than 20 seconds. And so, uh it's a very short amount of treatment time. Uh, but we have to align everything. We actually test patients during the procedure to make sure that they're not having side effects. And we've got the target, you know, perfectly centered. Uh, so that uh whole process takes about an hour. Um And once the procedure is done, we remove the frame and the patients uh essentially go home. So there are some side effects with focused ultrasound. Uh The most common is that patients have uh some uh issues with, with uh balance and with walking, uh those improve in the vast majority of patients. And uh by one year, most patients have have recovered uh from uh from any of those side effects. Focus ultrasound is very effective in treating tremor. So, large scale studies now have shown that on average uh patients improve their tremor by 75%. And not only that, that the effect, meaning that the tremor improvement actually continues past five years. So uh I think where cedars differentiates uh in uh treatments of movement disorders and uh also uh especially focus ultrasound is uh the comprehensive and integrated way that we take care of patients that are referred to us. Created by
BROADCASTMED