Why Surgical Intervention for Parkinson's Disease is Restricted only for few Today? Surgery
for Parkinson’s disease is reserved for only a few advanced cases
now-a-days. The availability of the drug levodopa has made this possible.
In the earlier days this drug was not available and hence surgery was
the option for treating Parkinson’s disease. Cryothalamotomy is a surgery that is used to stop the tremors in the patients. In this surgery an extremely cooled metal tip is inserted to destroy the area of the brain that causes tremors. In this procedure is more popular with the patients who suffer from extreme tremor. If the symptoms of Parkinson’s disease are only on one side of the body then this cryothalamotomy would work fine for such patients. There are also other procedures that involve the removal of the parts of the brain that causes these tremors and rigidity in the patients. These are highly effective at the same time they are of high risk. With the constant advances in the technology the procedures for the surgery are always revised. The high risk procedures for the Parkinson’s disease require high level of skill for the surgeon and they have to take extreme care and attention in doing the surgery. Any error could cause devastating loss in the patient. Researches are going on to implant new nerve cells into the brain. It might give good results and other forms of treatment and surgery are also studied. Hope these would give a good solution for this dreaded disease. These procedures are hoped to supplement the production of dopamine in the brain and enable smooth movements in the patients. Risk and complication is there in the surgery for Parkinson’s disease as with any other surgery. A simple error could cause an irreversible damage to the patient and the patient might go in to a permanent vegetative state. That is why surgery is considered as the last resort for this disease. They would try all the other options before they consider surgery for treating Parkinson’s disease. The patient and his family have to discuss about the procedure with the surgeon before the surgery. You can ask
about the complications and the risks involved in this surgery. The nature
of the surgery and the outcome of it should be known to all in the family
including the patient.
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