None.
None.
Introduction: Ablative surgery is an intervention of last resort for treatment-resistant obsessive-compulsive disorder (TROCD). Our center has been using bilateral anterior capsulotomy (BAC) for the past 20 years for patients eligible for limbic surgery. This report details our experience with BAC for TROCD.
Method: Five patients with OCD met eligibility criteria for BAC. Entry protocols were complex and took around 6 months to complete. Stereotactic radiofrequency was used to produce the capsulotomies. Lesion length varied between 5.7 and 16.9 mm in the coronal plane. Patients were followed between 4 and 20 years.
Results: All 5 patients (100%) were responders as defined by the widely accepted criteria of a reduction of ≥35% in Yale-Brown Obsessive Compulsive Scale (YBOCS) score at 18-month follow-up. Four patients remained responders at the 48 months. One patient was lost to follow-up. Responder status when viewed from the perspective of the YBOCS was sustained over the 4- to 20-year follow-up with one relapse 19 years postsurgery when medications were discontinued. Real-world psychiatric outcomes were different as other vulnerabilities surfaced illustrating the multifactorial determinants of mental health. No patient had any significant long-term neurocognitive or physical side effects.
Conclusion: BAC should remain an option of last resort for patients with severe OCD who remain unresponsive to all other interventions.
Background: Deep brain stimulation (DBS) is a highly efficient, evidence-based therapy to alleviate symptoms and improve quality of life in movement disorders such as Parkinson's disease, essential tremor, and dystonia, which is also being applied in several psychiatric disorders, such as obsessive-compulsive disorder and depression, when they are otherwise resistant to therapy.
Summary: At present, DBS is clinically applied in the so-called open-loop approach, with fixed stimulation parameters, irrespective of the patients' clinical state(s). This approach ignores the brain states or feedback from the central nervous system or peripheral recordings, thus potentially limiting its efficacy and inducing side effects by stimulation of the targeted networks below or above the therapeutic level.
Key messages: The currently emerging closed-loop (CL) approaches are designed to adapt stimulation parameters to the electrophysiological surrogates of disease symptoms and states. CL-DBS paves the way for adaptive personalized DBS protocols. This review elaborates on the perspectives of the CL technology and discusses its opportunities as well as its potential pitfalls for both clinical and research use in neuropsychiatric disorders.
Background: The National Coverage Determination (NCD) by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) for deep brain stimulation requires that a patient have "advanced idiopathic Parkinson's disease (PD) as determined by Hoehn and Yahr (HY) stage or the Unified Parkinson's Disease Rating Scale part III motor subscale (UPDRS III)." How to apply the HY or UPDRS III scales to define "advanced" PD is unclear.
Summary: There is an ongoing recovery audit by the CMS of deep brain stimulation cases that were covered by Medicare but are deemed not to have met the NCD requirements and therefore not to have been medically necessary. Whether a hospital is asked to refund Medicare often hinges upon whether medical documentation supports the diagnosis of advanced PD. However, neither the HY nor the UPDRS III scales use "advanced" to define or describe stages of PD. The NCD has an accompanying National Coverage Analysis that reviews the studies that inform the NCD. These studies use "advanced" as well as the HY and UPDRS III scales. This review identifies how the HY and UPDRS III scales were used to categorize advanced PD in the studies that were cited in the National Coverage Analysis.
Key messages: In the studies used for the NCD for deep brain stimulation for PD, an HY score ≥3 or a UPDRS III score ≥30 was used to describe patient cohorts considered to have advanced PD.
Introduction: Anterior nucleus of the thalamus (ANT) deep brain stimulation (DBS) is an increasingly promising treatment option for refractory epilepsy. Optimal therapeutic benefit has been associated with stimulation at the junction of ANT and the mammillothalamic tract (mtt), but electrophysiologic markers of this target are lacking. The present study examined microelectrode recordings (MER) during DBS to identify unique electrophysiologic characteristics of ANT and the ANT-mtt junction.
Methods: Ten patients with medically refractory epilepsy underwent MER during ANT-DBS implantation under general anesthesia. MER locations were determined based on coregistration of preoperative MRI, postoperative CT, and a stereotactic atlas of the thalamus (Morel atlas). Several neurophysiological parameters including single unit spiking rate, bursting properties, theta and alpha power and cerebrospinal fluid (CSF)-normalized root mean square (NRMS) of multiunit activity were characterized at recording depths and compared to anatomic boundaries.
Results: From sixteen hemispheres, 485 recordings locations were collected from a mean of 30.3 (15.64 ± 5.0 mm) recording spans. Three-hundred and ninety-four of these recording locations were utilized further for analysis of spiking and bursting rates, after excluding recordings that were more than 8 mm above the putative ventral ANT border. The ANT region exhibited discernible features including: (1) mean spiking rate (7.52 Hz ± 6.9 Hz; one-way analysis of variance test, p = 0.014 when compared to mediodorsal nucleus of the thalamus [MD], mtt, and CSF), (2) the presence of bursting activity with 40% of ANT locations (N = 59) exhibited bursting versus 24% the mtt (χ2; p < 0.001), and 32% in the MD (p = 0.38), (3) CSF-NRMS, a proxy for neuronal density, exhibited well demarcated changes near the entry and exit of ANT (linear regression, R = -0.33, p < 0.001). Finally, in the ANT, both theta (4-8 Hz) and alpha band power (9-12 Hz) were negatively correlated with distance to the ventral ANT border (linear regression, p < 0.001 for both). The proportion of recordings with spiking and bursting activity was consistently highest 0-2 mm above the ventral ANT border with the mtt.
Conclusion: We observed several electrophysiological markers demarcating the ANT superior and inferior borders including multiple single cell and local field potential features. A local maximum in neural activity just above the ANT-mtt junction was consistent with the previously described optimal target for seizure reduction. These features may be useful for successful targeting of ANT-DBS for epilepsy.
Introduction: Colloid cysts often occur in the third ventricle, and they are considered benign, slowly growing lesions. They commonly present with symptoms of intracranial hypertension and rarely sudden death due to acute hydrocephalus. The management options include cerebrospinal fluid diversion procedure by shunt, endoscopic or transcranial surgical excision, and stereotactic aspiration. Complications associated with excisional procedures make them undesirable to some patients. Stereotactic radiosurgery has emerged as a noninvasive less risky treatment option. To date, there is no clinical series in the literature reporting on this treatment modality. The aim of the study was to determine the efficacy and safety of gamma knife (GK) radiosurgery in the treatment of third ventricular colloid cysts.
Methods: This is a retrospective study involving 13 patients with third ventricular colloid cysts who underwent GK radiosurgery. GK radiosurgery was used as a primary treatment in all the patients. The median prescription dose was 12 Gy (11-12 Gy). The cyst volumes ranged from 0.2 to 10 cc (median 1.6 cc).
Results: The median follow-up was 50 months (18-108 months). Cyst control was achieved in 100% of the patients. Complete or partial response was observed in 12 patients (92%). Eight patients (62%) had hydrocephalus on imaging at the initial diagnosis. Seven of these patients had VP shunt insertion before GK. One patient required shunt insertion after GK.
Conclusion: GK for third ventricular colloid cysts is a promising treatment, regarding its efficacy and safety, to be added to other treatment options. A longer follow-up is required to confirm long-term control.
Introduction: With recent advancements in deep brain stimulation (DBS), directional leads featuring segmented contacts have been introduced, allowing for targeted stimulation of specific brain regions. Given that manufacturers employ diverse markers for lead orientation, our investigation focuses on the adaptability of the 2017 techniques proposed by the Cologne research group for lead orientation determination.
Methods: We tailored the two separate 2D and 3D X-ray-based techniques published in 2017 and originally developed for C-shaped markers, to the dual-marker of the Medtronic SenSight™ lead. In a retrospective patient study, we evaluated their feasibility and consistency by comparing the degree of agreement between the two methods.
Results: The Bland-Altman plot showed favorable concordance without any noticeable systematic errors. The mean difference was 0.79°, with limits of agreement spanning from 21.4° to -19.8°. The algorithms demonstrated high reliability, evidenced by an intraclass correlation coefficient of 0.99 (p < 0.001).
Conclusion: The 2D and 3D algorithms, initially formulated for discerning the circular orientation of a C-shaped marker, were adapted to the marker of the Medtronic SenSight™ lead. Statistical analyses revealed a significant level of agreement between the two methods. Our findings highlight the adaptability of these algorithms to different markers, achievable through both low-dose intraoperative 2D X-ray imaging and standard CT imaging.
Introduction: Deep brain stimulation of the subthalamic nucleus is an effective therapy for the motor symptoms of Parkinson's disease (PD). Typically, stimulation is applied at a high frequency (≥100 Hz) to alleviate motor symptoms. However, the effects on non-motor symptoms can be variable. Low-frequency oscillations are increasingly recognized as playing an important role in the non-motor functions of the subthalamic nucleus. Therefore, it has been hypothesized that low-frequency stimulation of the subthalamic nucleus (<100 Hz) may have a direct effect on these non-motor functions, thereby preferentially impacting non-motor symptoms of PD. Despite important therapeutic implications, the literature on this topic has not been summarized.
Method: To understand the current state of the field, we performed a comprehensive systematic review of the literature assessing the non-motor effects of low-frequency stimulation of the subthalamic nucleus in PD. We performed a supplementary meta-analysis to assess the effects of low- versus high-frequency stimulation on verbal fluency outcomes.
Results: Our search returned 7,009 results, of which we screened 4,199 results. A total of 145 studies were further assessed for eligibility, and a total of 21 studies met our inclusion criteria, representing 297 patients. These studies were a mix of case reports and control trials. The four clinical outcomes measured were sleep, sensory perception, cognition, and mood. A supplementary meta-analysis of six studies investigating the impact of low-frequency stimulation on verbal fluency did not find any significant results when pooling across subgroups.
Conclusion: LFS of the STN may have benefits on a range of cognitive and affective symptoms in PD. However, current studies in this space are heterogeneous, and the effect sizes are small. Factors that impact outcomes can be divided into stimulation and patient factors. Future work should consider the interactions between stimulation location and stimulation frequency as well as how these interact depending on the specific non-motor phenotype.