Parkinsons patient "feels cured" with new adaptive deep brain stimulation device

Re:Parkinsons patient "feels cured" with new adaptive deep b... by fracus on Tuesday January 28, 2025 @06:57PM (#42859747)

My Mom has had the surgery twice now, once for the left side and once for the right. Brain surgery is no joke. It takes a long time just to recover from that. And Parkinsons is a disease that will continue to get worse. The surgery adds quality of life but it will not stop or cure Parkinsons. The surgery is a wonderful option but it isn't a cure.

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Re:Parkinsons patient "feels cured" with new adaptive deep b... by ryeguy_24 on Tuesday January 28, 2025 @10:07PM (#42861039)

Same for my mother-in-law. But very little benefit unfortunately. It’s a shame it didn’t add much value for such big surgeries.

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Re:Parkinsons patient "feels cured" with new adaptive deep b... by MichaelRo on Wednesday January 29, 2025 @12:47AM (#42861955)

These deep brain surgical implants are the calomel of today: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Calomel

The logic is: we have no idea but must do something, surgical implants are something, let's do brain surgery and implant something!

My father died at the age of 82 from late stage Parkinson's, never got dementia but eventually whatever neurons in the brain control movements, they fail to do so not just for movement but also vegetative processes such as swallowing and gut transit so ... one cannot live without that. Also those neurons die so that can't be good. No amount of waves and vibrations can compensate for dead brain tissue.

Hard pass on the calomel. Come back when you actually got something that works.

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Re:Parkinsons patient "feels cured" with new adaptive deep b... by toast0 on Wednesday January 29, 2025 @02:27AM (#42862496)

I mean, this feels more like electroshock therapy to me, but that's made a big comeback and is apparently considered relatively safe and somewhat effective.

Bloodletting has some conditions it's actually appropriate for too.

Not sure mercury poisoning is going to turn out to be safe and effective anytime soon, though.

I'm not advocating for this, but if people are going to do it with informed consent, might as well collect proper data to try to determine if it objectively works. Snake oil that works, if it actually works, is something that works.

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Re:Parkinsons patient "feels cured" with new adaptive deep b... by fracus on Wednesday January 29, 2025 @01:23PM (#42868987)

The parkinson brain surgeries work. They have proven to have worked. They wouldn't do them if they didn't work. They work almost miraculously. The problem is that Parkinson gets worse, you can't stop it. So the surgeries will work for a specific complaint but new symptoms will eventually arise.

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