- The three main symptoms that Parkinson’s generates in patients are rigidity, bradykinesia or slow movement, and tremor.
- So far there is no cure for this neurodegenerative disease, but there are treatments for its care.
- ISSSTE patients who have received the brain chip have obtained a 50 to 55% improvement in their movement.
The Institute of Security and Social Services for State Workers (Issste) innovates in care to treat Parkinson’s disease with the placement of a brain neurostimulator chip. This novelty is applied at the “20 de Noviembre” National Medical Center (CMN) and helps to facilitate and improve movement control in patients for whom it is indicated.
Because this condition is neurodegenerative, progressive, and incurable, it also implements various pharmacological, rehabilitative, and surgical treatments to deal with stages and symptoms.
Who can receive the brain chip implant?
Within the framework of World Parkinson’s Day, which is commemorated every April 11, the hospital’s neurosurgeon, Manuel Hernández Salazar, explained that deep brain neurostimulation is a therapeutic option that can benefit patients with stiffness and slow movement.
“The percentage of improvement expected for a brain chip of this type is 50 to 55 percent of all reported world series, and it is what we have achieved at the ISSSTE National Medical Center ’20 de Noviembre’ for some years” .
The hospital’s Neurology Department has an interdisciplinary committee of specialists that collegiately evaluates each of the cases of potential candidates for this advanced neurosurgical treatment. The purpose is to place it to those who have the greatest possibility of obtaining benefits and responding to the procedure.
Hernández Salazar stressed that Parkinson’s has three cardinal symptoms: rigidity, bradykinesia, or slowness of movement, and tremor.
What happens in the brain with this disease?
The specialist commented that it begins with a selective depopulation of neurons found in the midbrain in the compact zone of the substantia nigra. This neuronal nucleus activates others that in turn activate more, until making a tree around the entire cerebral cortex and the loss of these neurons that initiate movement is what produces Parkinson’s.
Neurostimulators are placed with the person awake, modulating the intensity of electrical discharges in neuronal nucleimainly in the internal globus pallidus, and to verify that they effectively facilitate the process of initiation, organization and execution of the movement in the patient.
This advanced treatment hasand direct impact on the quality of life of patients by improving their motor functionality and making them feel betterin addition to the fact that the doses of medications are often adjusted and reduced, which delays the development of the disease for several years.
Testimony of the beneficiary
A 52-year-old woman, a patient at the ISSSTE General Hospital in San Luis Potosí, who has had Parkinson’s for 12 years, received the implant and shared what is the most difficult thing about this pathology: “it affected me too much because I couldn’t walk, it was a lot the stiffness, the tremor and not being able to do my own personal things”.
10 months after placing the chip in his brain, he thanked the treating medical staff and ISSSTE for accessing treatment. “It’s wonderful, one more life expectancy for people who have this disease, being more independent again is something fantastic, my life has changed a lot and I make it almost normal.”
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