Deep brain stimulation for movement disorders before DBS for movement disorders☆

Abstract 

Deep brain stimulation (DBS) is an established surgical treatment for Parkinson’s disease (PD), essential tremor and dystonia. It is generally acknowledged that the development of DBS as we know it today started with the publication of Benabid, Pollak et al in 1987 on thalamic DBS for tremor. This technique gained momentum in the mid-Nineties after that Pollak and Benabid introduced the subthalamic nucleus as a target in advanced PD.

This paper reviews the gestational pre-natal era of deep brain stimulation, before 1987. The origin of DBS can be traced back to the practice of intra-operative electrical stimulation, used for target exploration prior to lesioning, during the early years of stereotactic functional neurosurgery. During the 60s, Sem-Jacobsen and others implanted externalised electrodes which were used for intermittent stimulation and evaluation during weeks or months, prior to subsequent ablation of thalamic and other basal ganglia targets. In the early 70s Bechtereva treated PD patients using “therapeutic electrical stimulation” through electrodes implanted for up to 1.5 years. In the late 70s and early 80s the term Deep Brain Stimulation was coined and few groups attempted treatment of Parkinson’s disease, non-Parkinsonian tremor and dystonia with high-frequency stimulation using chronically implanted DBS systems. Cumbersome, un-sophisticated DBS hardware, together with the general decline of all surgery for PD following the introduction of levodopa, may have contributed to the lack of popularity of old-times DBS. It is to the credit of the Grenoble Group to have reinvented, modernised and expanded modern DBS in surgical treatment of movement disorders.

Keywords: Deep brain stimulation, History, Parkinson’s disease, Movement disorders, Stereotaxis