The University Clinic of Navarra (CUN) has confirmed a 85% reduction in tremor in the first 150 Parkinson’s patients treated with his new ultrasound technique high-intensity focused therapy (HIFU), with minimal side effects and the same efficacy and safety in elderly patients.
The main focus in the use of HIFU has so far been tremor reduction in patients with essential tremor or Parkinson’s disease, the center explains in a note. In it, the director of the Neurology Department of the CUN, Mari Cruz Rodríguez, explains that in the analysis of the results at 6 months “the average improvement is 85%, and of them, a high percentage, around 30%, have achieved a disappearance of the tremor”. “This improvement, in addition, gives them a clear improvement in their quality of life & rdquor ;, it affects.
The CUN incorporated this non-invasive procedure in January 2019, the date from which it has followed up its patients in which it has seen how age is not an exclusion factor, explain the same sources. According to Rodríguez, “brain stimulation surgery cannot be performed on people over 65 or 70 years of age, however, with HIFU, 32% of the patients with Parkinson’s disease that we have treated were over 75 years of age. And we have seen that, both in terms of benefit and side effects, the results are the same as in younger patients & rdquor ;, she details.
In fact, the safety and efficacy of this technique have been seen in all clinical and demographic variables, achieving “the same degree of efficacy regardless of the years that the disease has been with it, its severity, age or the presence of risk factors vascular”.
So far, it has been possible to analyze the evolution during the first 6 months of the first 150 patients, a sample in which, in addition to the efficacy to eliminate tremor, the appearance of side effects has been evaluated. “When performing the treatment, a small edema is generated around the treated area that often causes mild and transient side effects in the first month. The edema can cause tingling or a little instability, which disappear as the edema is reabsorbed and at 6 months there are very few who describe it”, admits Rodríguez.
Currently, the Neurology and Neurosurgery medical team continues to investigate follow-up one year after the intervention to check the longer-term effects, although preliminary data show a sustained effect.