After years of growth and trials, Medtronic has received U.S. Food and Drug Administration approval for adaptive technology that uses sophisticated stimulation full in the brain to personalize the treatment of Parkinson’s symptoms.
On Monday, the Fridley-run firm announced the governmental win for its , BrainSense , Adaptive deep brain stimulation in a narrow, surgically-implanted neurostimulator in the chest with brings stretching through the spine to the head. In order to treat disease symptoms like tremors, it builds on long-established deep brain stimulation ( DBS ) technology, which acts sort of like a pacemaker in the brain and continuously delivers electrical current pulses to abnormally active structures.
Instead of constantly stimulating at full-force, the new technologies adapts its stimulation amplitude to no over-correct or under-correct the effects of medication treatment for Parkinson’s symptoms, which had formerly occurred, said Dr. Helen Bronte-Stewart, a Stanford professor who was the world principal investigator for the trial behind the therapy.
” This is the start of a whole new way of delivering stimulus to the head, just like it was to the spirit”, Bronte-Stewart said, comparing the tech to the device. Clinical test results are not yet published.
Brett Wall, leader of Medtronic Neuroscience, described the method as an engineering marvel.
” What people want to do is ignore they have this disease”, said Wall, who is also an executive vice president. ” And while we don’t treat the underlying problems below, we give them symptom alleviation. It enables them to continue living their lives in a regular manner.
According to the Parkinson’s Foundation, one million Americans experience the neurological condition that destroys dopamine-producing brain cells. Dr. Michael Okun, a medical assistant for the Parkinson’s Foundation, said in an email the condition is one of the most difficult, with more than 20 machine and non-motor signs.
” Scientists have been on a decades-long voyage to customize the deep brain stimulation practice,” said Okun, who is also the director of the University of Florida Health’s Norman Fixel Institute for Neurological Diseases. ” Dynamic products have the potential to “open up” more avenues for chronic neurological disorders like Parkinson’s.”
Older recognized expert Scott Stanslaski said that after receiving approval for the use of deep brain stimulation for Parkinson’s in the late 1990s, Medtronic scientists wondered if there was a way to utilize brain signals to modify treatment based on when a patient is going through a period of overtreatment or undertreatment.
According to Stanslaski, who created the BrainSense sensing-enabled DBS feature,” we can better balance those types of fluctuations and give the patients an overall smoother treatment by being able to detect when the brain is going through those states and then automatically adjust the DBS therapy.”
According to Stanslaski, the technology was first put into human hands in 2013 and then ran several trials on dozens of people before being tested.
The announcement on Monday includes approval for the BrainSense adaptive deep-brain stimulation feature for personalized therapy as well as a piece of equipment called the BrainSense Electrode Identifier, which allows doctors to receive a real-time snapshot of a patient’s brain signals for programming purposes, according to the company.
Medtronic, Boston Scientific and Abbott Laboratories, which all have large presences in the Twin Cities, have long used deep brain stimulation to treat diseases like Parkinson’s, said Dr. Jerrold Vitek, the chair of Department of Neurology at the University of Minnesota’s Medical school. Medtronic is the first to make the technology adaptive for Parkinson’s patients, he said.
According to Vitek,” It’s just another step in the direction of the ability to use this really powerful tool for the treatment of things like movement disorders” and other conditions. Researchers could also look into the potential application of adaptive technology for conditions like obsessive compulsive disorder.
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