I'd Advise Against It
Brain Stimulation May Curb Persistent Depression
Individuals with severe depression who do not respond to standard types of treatment may be helped with an experimental treatment called deep brain stimulation, Canadian investigators report.
Four of six severely depressed patients who underwent deep brain stimulation, which involves surgically implanting electrodes in a targeted area of the brain thought to be involved in depression, experienced a "striking and sustained" let-up in their depression, investigators report in the medical journal Neuron.
...
According to study investigator Dr. Helen S. Mayberg from Emory University in Atlanta, the four who improved, but not the other two, had "early onset depression with classic melancholic features."
...
"We need new treatments so that a patient does not go through 5 years of drug cocktails and every possible combination of pills and electroconvulsive therapy before coming to the conclusion that you need something else," she said. "Why should people suffer that long, when maybe we can do something that will give true relief?"
--------------------------
Indeed, Dr. Mayberg. Why should they suffer when they could have you embed electrodes in their brains instead?
According to this next article, DBS is nothing short of a MIRACLE TREATMENT for intractable depression. Behold, the very first patient was instantly cured!
Jeanne Harris, 50, has battled the illness for the better part of a decade. About 10 per cent of people with chronic depression do not respond to treatment and Harris was among them. Despite taking a cocktail of drugs, she was incapable of working or even maintaining contact with friends.
In one six-month stretch, she travelled from bed to couch and back, bathing and changing her clothes only on the one day a week she was taken to see her doctor.
Nearly two years ago Harris became the first patient to undergo surgery to have two thin wires with electrode contacts threaded into the subgenual cingulate region deep within the frontal lobes of her brain. The ends of the wires were then tunnelled through to the lower neck area, where they were hooked up to a pacemaker-like device placed under the skin.
As the surgeon, Dr. Andres Lozano of Toronto Western Hospital, gentle probed different spots within the section, Harris - who was conscious throughout - was infused with an intense, almost forgotten, sense of serenity.
A few hours later, she was home clipping hedges. A minor task. A major miracle.
"It was absolutely unbelievable - to do it and to be feeling normal and enjoying it like I remember I used to feel," she recalled in an interview Monday.
Harris has had no side-effects from the surgery and raves about the procedure that gave her back her life.
"I see it as a major medical breakthrough. I see it as it saved my life because I was definitely headed towards suicide, because a person can only take so much."
--------------------------
Wow, you know, the tiny number of people treated, and the astonishing claims of cure remind me of another time and era, another miracle cure that involved brain surgery and the frontal lobes ...
Yes, I'm disgusted.
Individuals with severe depression who do not respond to standard types of treatment may be helped with an experimental treatment called deep brain stimulation, Canadian investigators report.
Four of six severely depressed patients who underwent deep brain stimulation, which involves surgically implanting electrodes in a targeted area of the brain thought to be involved in depression, experienced a "striking and sustained" let-up in their depression, investigators report in the medical journal Neuron.
...
According to study investigator Dr. Helen S. Mayberg from Emory University in Atlanta, the four who improved, but not the other two, had "early onset depression with classic melancholic features."
...
"We need new treatments so that a patient does not go through 5 years of drug cocktails and every possible combination of pills and electroconvulsive therapy before coming to the conclusion that you need something else," she said. "Why should people suffer that long, when maybe we can do something that will give true relief?"
--------------------------
Indeed, Dr. Mayberg. Why should they suffer when they could have you embed electrodes in their brains instead?
According to this next article, DBS is nothing short of a MIRACLE TREATMENT for intractable depression. Behold, the very first patient was instantly cured!
Jeanne Harris, 50, has battled the illness for the better part of a decade. About 10 per cent of people with chronic depression do not respond to treatment and Harris was among them. Despite taking a cocktail of drugs, she was incapable of working or even maintaining contact with friends.
In one six-month stretch, she travelled from bed to couch and back, bathing and changing her clothes only on the one day a week she was taken to see her doctor.
Nearly two years ago Harris became the first patient to undergo surgery to have two thin wires with electrode contacts threaded into the subgenual cingulate region deep within the frontal lobes of her brain. The ends of the wires were then tunnelled through to the lower neck area, where they were hooked up to a pacemaker-like device placed under the skin.
As the surgeon, Dr. Andres Lozano of Toronto Western Hospital, gentle probed different spots within the section, Harris - who was conscious throughout - was infused with an intense, almost forgotten, sense of serenity.
A few hours later, she was home clipping hedges. A minor task. A major miracle.
"It was absolutely unbelievable - to do it and to be feeling normal and enjoying it like I remember I used to feel," she recalled in an interview Monday.
Harris has had no side-effects from the surgery and raves about the procedure that gave her back her life.
"I see it as a major medical breakthrough. I see it as it saved my life because I was definitely headed towards suicide, because a person can only take so much."
--------------------------
Wow, you know, the tiny number of people treated, and the astonishing claims of cure remind me of another time and era, another miracle cure that involved brain surgery and the frontal lobes ...
Yes, I'm disgusted.
posted by Christine at Thursday, March 03, 2005
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home