It’s a small sample group, but Deep Brain Stimulation (DBS) procedures that implant electrodes in the brain seem to be delivering spotty results on promises to help patients who are experiencing increasing loss of control of movement (from conditions such as Parkinson’s disease, Essential Tremor, dystonia, and tremor due to multiple sclerosis).

From the archives of the journal Neurolology comes this report that says about 50% of patients who complained of poor results improved after remedial actions were taken.

It was a small sample group (only 41 patients), but it looks as though the study indicated the people who improved did so because interventions were able to correct issues that developed due to pre-screening, surgical and device, programming and medication errors.

Well, this isn’t an official source of medical information, so I feel safe saying it’s nice to know that correcting for errors can help such a promising percentage of patients. And of course the hope is that the number of errors needing remediation will get smaller as the practitioners get more practice in.