The application of ultrasound of high intensity (HIFU) it’s a procedure non-invasive that avoids surgery open and allows the patient with Parkinson’s either shaking essential relieve your symptoms by using a beam high temperature.
Free Diary spoke with Happy Cici, neurologist originating from Barahona residing in Madrid since 2009, who has specialized in a technique that uses ultrasound to treat movement disorders and pain in patients with neurodegenerative diseases.
Feliz, who has been working in the Unit for 11 years Parkinson’s of the Jiménez Díaz Foundation University Hospitalis dedicated to therapies advanced cases of this disease looking for alternatives that significantly improve the quality of life of patients.
“He treatment with ultrasound focal is to use a new technique for a treatment very old, both for him Parkinson’s like movement disorders, they have always, for many years, been made injuries cerebral. Already in the Bible there was talk of holes made in the skulls to expel demons when diseases were confused with evil spirits,” Feliz said to start the talk.
He indicated that this way of operating, with an open cranial incision, has been losing ground, “because it is complicated and in the end it produced more damage than the symptoms it controlled.”
He explained that the advantage of the technique of ultrasound compared to brain stimulation through electrodes is that it limits the complications of the surgerysuch as bleeding or possible wound infections.
“This new technique is a technology Israeli, which uses ultrasound and resonance to produce a injury millimeter, perfect, in a very well chosen area of the brainwhere the symptom is controlled, both the movement disorder and painwhich is also another area that is applied, without injuring the adjacent areas, is a injury very precise that allows you to only control that symptom,” he highlighted.
“The results are quite good, it has been more than 10 years since the first essays Clinical trials with this technique are already done in more than a dozen countries around the world and there are more than 4,000 patients operated on with this technique today,” he added.
Specifically, about the treatment for shaking initial said that “we can achieve the same result with less risk and faster.”
He procedure
“The patient is awake at all times, becomes anesthesia place to place the frame in the forehead area and in the neck area. The patient is fully awake because we need his collaboration throughout the procedure. procedure“said the doctor.
From there it is explored to determine the place where the injuryafter that area of the brainthe temperature is increased to a medium degree that allows us to see if the temperature is being controlled. shaking or the symptom in general.
“That injury What I did with medium temperature is completely reversible. Until we are sure, we do not increase the temperature enough to leave that injury which is what will control the symptom,” said Feliz.
“We are about two and a half hours from the time we put the frame on the patient until we take it down from the MRI to take it to the room,” the doctor commented on the duration of the procedure.
Feliz pointed out that most patients stay 24 hours in observation and then they are sent to their homes, but there have been extraordinary cases where patients have received the high the same day of procedure.
“Most patients stay and leave the next day, but there are patients who are so well that they give up.” high the same day because there is no injury,” he highlighted.
He clarified that in patients with Parkinson’s It is prudent to wait until they are between three and five years old. diagnosis to do the technique because there must be certainty that it is not another neurological condition; in the case of shaking It is essential that it can be used as soon as the patient is diagnosed.
Given the possibility of applying this technique in Republic Dominicanthe neurologist He answered that “it would be necessary to pay a lot of interest, especially because of the costs of the device, but it is not impossible. Right now in Latin America they do not have this treatment. Mexico and Republic Dominican have started working with therapies advanced, but not with this procedure“.
Other applications
The specialist emphasized that, although “the majority of cases that have been carried out worldwide are Parkinson’s and shakingthere are more and more cases of patients with pain chronic like neuralgia of the trigeminal nerve, who are benefiting from the technique.
He stressed that the next objective is that the HIFU have more applications at a chronic level, such as fibromyalgia and other types of diseases pain high.
Exercise the brain
The Dominican called for exercise exercise frequently, monitor diet, avoid tobacco, monitor cardiovascular risk factors and live in a community life avoiding isolation, since this helps protect the brain.
“Nine out of ten ictus can be prevented,” he warned.
Likewise, he urged learning new things to activate the neurons who are falling behind, as well as putting together puzzles or sudoku exercises.
“If you want to learn a new language and play a musical instrument, well, that’s extra points, but, for example, something as simple as changing your routine, changing the way you get home from work, change it, and with that you are already stimulating he brain“, concluded Feliz.
