BRAIN IMPLANT TAMES PARKINSON'S SYMPTOMS.Byline: Knight-Ridder Tribune News Wire A 59-year-old man from Chisholm, Minn., has become the first Minnesotan to have a battery-powered stimulator implanted in his brain to control debilitating de·bil·i·tat·ing adj. Causing a loss of strength or energy. Debilitating Weakening, or reducing the strength of. Mentioned in: Stress Reduction tremors caused by his Parkinson's disease Parkinson's disease or Parkinsonism, degenerative brain disorder first described by the English surgeon James Parkinson in 1817. When there is no known cause, the disease usually appears after age 40 and is referred to as Parkinson's disease. . The surgery, only the third in the nation, was performed in October by doctors at the University of Minnesota (body, education) University of Minnesota - The home of Gopher. http://umn.edu/. Address: Minneapolis, Minnesota, USA. , one of only two centers in the nation with FDA FDA abbr. Food and Drug Administration FDA, n.pr See Food and Drug Administration. FDA, n.pr the abbreviation for the Food and Drug Administration. approval to perform the investigational procedure. The other is at the University of Kansas The University of Kansas (often referred to as KU or just Kansas) is an institution of higher learning in Lawrence, Kansas. The main campus resides atop Mount Oread. . University researchers waited until Monday to announce the procedure because they first wanted to make sure that it had been successful. The battery-powered stimulator, manufactured by Medtronic Inc., virtually has eliminated Bob Zgonc's tremors, erratic movements and painful muscle cramps. It has allowed him to run, drive, hunt and take his grandchildren sledding, and his wife has been able to return to work. ``It's pretty dramatic,'' said Walter Low, a neurosurgery neurosurgery /neu·ro·sur·gery/ (noor´o-sur?jer-e) surgery of the nervous system. neu·ro·sur·ger·y n. Surgery on any part of the nervous system. professor and the study's principal investigator. An estimated 1 million to 1.5 million Americans have Parkinson's, a degenerative neurological disease that causes its victims to suffer uncontrollable shakes and tremors, rigid limbs, muscle cramping, severe pain and other debilitating symptoms. Over time, the symptoms become so severe that patients no longer can feed or care for themselves. Drugs, such as L-Dopa, help relieve some symptoms but eventually lose their effectiveness. ``Medications are very helpful during the early stages of the disease, but as those nerve cells begin to die out, the machinery (of the body) to use the drugs isn't there and they become less effective,'' Low said. Some Parkinson's patients who cannot be helped by drugs undergo a surgical procedure called a pallidotomy, during which a surgeon makes a small hole in the pallidum, a region deep in the center of the brain that is involved in movement. But if the hole is not located properly, patients run a risk of having their speech, vision and other functions permanently damaged, Low said. During the implant, Zgonc was given a local anesthetic local anesthetic n. An agent that, when applied directly to mucous membranes or when injected about the nerves, produces loss of sensation by inhibiting nerve excitation or conduction. but remained awake throughout the procedure. |
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