No CrossRef data available.
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 23 December 2022
Parkinson’s disease (PD) is the second most common neurodegenerative disease in the world. High-intensity focused ultrasound (HIFU) is a new non-invasive therapeutic option for treating the motor symptoms of PD. HIFU is an imaging-guided procedure for therapeutic brain ablation that has been used for patients with essential tremor and neuropathic pain. It is indicated for patients older than 22 years of age who have PD that is refractory to drug treatment and are ineligible for surgery. The objective of this study was to conduct an early assessment of HIFU subthalamotomy for the treatment of motor symptoms in patients with PD.
HIFU was identified by the early awareness and alert system, SINTESIS- nuevas tecnologías, of the Agencia de Evaluación de Tecnologías Sanitarias at the Instituto de Salud Carlos III. Relevant literature published to October 2021 was identified by searching PubMed, EMBASE, ClinicalTrials.gov, and the Cochrane Library.
One prospective study and one randomized controlled trial (RCT) were found that assessed the efficacy and safety of HIFU subthalamotomy for treating the motor symptoms of PD. The Movement Disorder Society-Sponsored Revision of the Unified Parkinson’s Disease Rating Scale Part III (MDS-UPDRS III) was used to measure changes in symptoms (>30% change from baseline was considered clinically relevant). Both studies reported a reduction of symptoms in the intervention group. The MDS-UPDRS III score changed from 16.6 to 7.5 six months after treatment in the prospective study and from 19.9 to 9.9 four months after treatment in the RCT (a decrease of 11.6 points was observed after 12 months). The main adverse events reported were dyskinesia, speech and gait disturbances, and weakness, all of which resolved without treatment.
The results regarding the efficacy and safety of HIFU for treating the motor symptoms of PD are promising. HIFU is a non-invasive procedure that eliminates the risks associated with surgery. Although rapid diffusion of this technology is expected, further studies and economic evaluation are needed.
To send this article to your Kindle, first ensure no-reply@cambridge.org is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about sending to your Kindle. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.
Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.
Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.
To save this article to your Dropbox account, please select one or more formats and confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you used this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your Dropbox account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.
To save this article to your Google Drive account, please select one or more formats and confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you used this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your Google Drive account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.