What is the percentage of failure for deep brain stimulation?

Doctor's Answers 1

This is again a very common question for people who are considering DBS, and if you are selected, we pick the participants very carefully. Usually, we achieve a very high success rate, meaning that they feel it is a very great help to them and they will even recommend it to their friends with Parkinson's disease. I think in terms of failure, taking in mind the complications we expect, there is a risk of serious complication about 1% and a risk of infection about 3%.

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Answered By

Dr Paul Ang

General Practitioner

Who is a good candidate for DBS (deep brain stimulation)?

Essentially the criteria we look out for are Parkinson's patients we feel will greatly benefit from this. We are looking for patients who maybe have mobile fluctuations, meaning they have this “on-off” phenomenon. We want to make sure we do not treat patients with dementia because they do not respond as well to DBS and we want to exclude patients who have severe depression. Again, patients with depression should not have surgery until their depression is stable. So we eliminate those patients who aren't suitable.

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Answered By

Dr Nicolas Kon

Neurosurgeon

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