Incision-Free Brain Surgery for Tremor

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To find out if you might be a candidate for incision-free surgery for tremor, please:

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If shaking and tremors caused by essential tremor or tremor-dominant Parkinson’s disease, are keeping you from living the life you want to live, you may benefit from an incision-free brain surgery treatment called MR-guided focused ultrasound, available at Miami Valley Hospital.

Patients benefit from:

Potential for immediate results with the potential to reduce or eliminate tremors
Minimally invasive with no incisions or sedation
Outpatient procedure with quick recovery and minimal side effects

Premier Health is the only health care system in Southwest Ohio to offer this advanced treatment.

How Does It Work?

MR-guided focused ultrasound is a new technology from Insightec used for therapeutic purposes. Focused ultrasound enables safe and effective incisionless therapy with little to no harm to the surrounding brain and minimal side effects.

Ultrasound is a form of energy that passes through skin, muscle, fat, and bone. Ultrasound energy is nonionizing, meaning there is no radiation exposure.

During the focused ultrasound procedure, ultrasound waves safely pass through the skull without the need for an incision. The ultrasound waves are focused on a small point in the brain (Vim of the thalamus, identified by clinical research as the location to alleviate the tremor). The temperature at the target rises high enough to create a small ablation or burn, providing a therapeutic effect. The whole procedure is conducted inside an MRI scanner.

The MRI is the eyes of the treatment, enabling your physician to plan, guide, and target the area for treatment. It also acts like a thermometer, providing continuous temperature monitoring to verify that only the targeted tissue is destroyed.

Patients are awake and monitored during this procedure. Prior to final treatment, low energy waves are utilized to assess patient response and potential adverse effects.

Treatment Benefits

The MR-guided focused ultrasound treatment is approved by the Food and Drug Administration as safe and effective, with minimal side effects. In a clinical study, patients reported an immediate improvement in tremor, which was mostly maintained three years later. With no surgical cuts, there is minimal to no risk of infection. The treatment is a single procedure often performed on an outpatient basis, and you can expect to resume normal activities within days.

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