LOUISVILLE, Ky. (WDRB) -- Norton Healthcare's Neuroscience Institute will soon begin offering a non-invasive procedure to reduce tremors in Parkinson's patients.
The involuntary shaking makes simple tasks like drinking water or writing extremely difficult. Treating those tremors usually requires surgery, but now there's a new method with no incisions that requires no time in the hospital.
The Norton Neuroscience Institute will be the first and only facility in Kentucky to offer MRI-guided high-frequency focused ultrasound for essential tremor and tremor-dominant Parkinson’s disease, according to a news release.
The procedure, which creates a small lesion on a specific area of the brain, has been shown to dramatically improve tremor symptoms for patients on the first day of treatment.
Here's how it works: the fully conscious patient is placed on an MRI scan table that allows frequent scans to monitor the location, size and temperature of the lesion being created. The patient wears a helmet-like device filled with cool water that has more than 1,000 ultrasound transmitters.
Dr. Abigail Rao with the Norton Neuroscience Institute said the patient remains awake during the procedure.
"We literally test their tremor," Rao said. "We may ask them to draw a spiral on a clipboard or to pretend like they're drinking from a cup of water. And we also ask them about any side effects."
During the procedure, the MRI scanner guides the ultrasound laser beams to specific points of the patient's brain and applies heat that then creates a lesion. The newly created lesion provides immediate and dramatic relief of hand tremor and other symptoms of movement disorders, allowing for better motor control for daily tasks or hobbies, increasing the patient's quality of life.
"It's quite amazing in the fact that this can all be done without the patient needing something put into their brain, without anesthesia, without being in the hospital," Rao said. "So these aspects make it very unique."
Patients are released the same day.
The technology was purchased with $2.8 million in funding through the Norton Healthcare Foundation.
The procedure will be available this fall at Norton's Neuroscience Institute on Brownsboro Road.
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