ABSTRACT
Background: Deep brain stimulation is an essential therapeutic tool in Parkinson's disease. Aim: To assess the results of a series of patients with Parkinson's disease treated with micro-electrode guided subthalamic nucleus stimulation. Material and Methods: Twenty patients with idiopathic Parkinson's disease were studied (10 males). Three months after surgery, we analyzed the change in motor disturbances, medication need to control symptoms and quality of life. Results: We observed a significant improvement in all the assessed variables. Motor involvement determined as OFF hours and expressed as percentage of the day changed from 30 ± 15 to 10 ± 7% in the preoperative and postoperative periods, respectively. ON hours without dyskinesia changed from 17 ± 16 to 78 ± 21%. ON hours with dyskinesia changed from 53 ± 23 to 12 ± 15%. Medication need changed from 1,505 ± 499 to 1,214 ± 528 levodopa equivalents. Parkinson's Disease Questionnaire 39 score changed from 62.9 ± 22.7 to 34.3 ± 18.5. During the 5-year follow-up a continuous improvement of symptoms was observed. Conclusions: Micro-electrode guided subthalamic nucleus functional surgery in patients with Parkinson's disease has good immediate and late results.
Subject(s)
Humans , Male , Female , Middle Aged , Parkinson Disease/surgery , Subthalamic Nucleus/surgery , Deep Brain Stimulation/methods , Quality of Life , Severity of Illness Index , Retrospective Studies , Treatment Outcome , Deep Brain Stimulation/adverse effectsABSTRACT
Background: The clinical diagnosis of brain death is complex. Aim: To evaluate the diagnostic accuracy of transcranial Doppler (TCD) for brain death. Patients and Methods: Patients seen on the intensive care unit of a private hospital between January 2004 to December 2008, were included if they were in structural coma, had no craniectomy and had a blind evaluation by a neurologist and TCD done in less than three hours. The diagnosis of brain death was based on a clinical evaluation that considered the absence of sedative drugs, median blood pressure >60 mmHg, body temperature over 35º Celsius and complete absence of brainstem refexes. An expert neurosonologist, with a TCD-PMD-100, 2 Mhz transducer, used an institutional protocol that considers the examination as positive for brain circulatory arrest when there is presence of reverberating, small systolic peaks or the disappearance of a previous signal present on both middle cerebral arteries and intracranial vertebral arteries. Results: Fifty three patients were evaluated, 25 with clinical brain death. On 45 cases (84.9 percent), the interval between both evaluations was less than one hour. The sensitivity, specifcity, positive and negative predictive values for the diagnosis of brain death with TCD were 100, 96, 96.1 and 100 percent respectively. Positive and negative likelihood ratios for brain death were 28 and 0, respectively. Conclusions: TCD is a valid and useful technique for the diagnosis of brain death and can be used on complicated cases.