What is deep brain stimulation (DBS)?
Deep brain stimulation (DBS) is a medical procedure that involves a mild electrical current delivered to a specific part of your brain. The electricity in that current stimulates the brain cells in that area, which can help several conditions. The current reaches your brain through one or more wires attached to a small device implanted underneath your skin near your collarbone.
Who needs deep brain stimulation?
DBS treats conditions that affect how your neurons — a key type of brain cell — do their job. When neurons aren’t working properly, that affects the abilities those neurons control. Depending on how severe the problem is, they can either partly or completely lose those abilities.
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Why is DBS used?
There are billions of neurons in each human brain, and these cells communicate with each other using electrical and chemical signals. Several brain conditions can make neurons in different parts of your brain less active. When that happens, those parts of your brain don’t work as well. Depending on the part of the brain affected, you can have disruptions in the abilities controlled in that area.
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DBS uses an artificial electrical current to make those neurons more active, which can help with the symptoms of several different brain conditions. However, researchers still don’t know exactly how or why this works.
What conditions and symptoms can DBS treat?
DBS can treat several conditions that affect your brain, including movement disorders, mental health conditions and epilepsy.
DBS has approval from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to treat the following conditions:
- Dystonia.
- Essential tremor.
- Medication-resistant epilepsy.
- Parkinson’s disease (when this condition worsens and medication is not as effective).
- Medication-resistant obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD).
Conditions that might benefit from DBS
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Researchers are also looking into whether or not DBS can help with other conditions. Conditions that might benefit from DBS include:
- Addictions.
- Alzheimer’s disease.
- Anxiety.
- Cluster headaches.
- Eating disorders.
- Schizophrenia.
- Severe pain disorders (especially pain that happens because of nerve or brain conditions, or pain from incurable diseases like cancer).
- Severe, medication-resistant depression.
- Tourette syndrome.
It’s important to keep in mind that while the above conditions might benefit from DBS, experts still don’t know if this is the case. It usually takes years of research and clinical trials to determine if a medical procedure like DBS is helpful for conditions like these. While researchers are looking into them, DBS surgery to treat these conditions is not common.
How common are DBS implantation procedures?
As of 2019, experts estimate that about 160,000 people have had a procedure to implant a DBS device since the 1980s. Experts also estimate that about 12,000 procedures happen each year.
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