Nearly 35% of people with Parkinson’s experience OFF periods (and this percentage increases with age), and OFF periods can negatively impact quality of life in substantial ways. Deep Brain Stimulation has the ability to change that. In this webinar, Dr. Helen Brontë-Stewart and moderator, Dr. Soania Mathur, will address many aspects of Deep Brain Stimulation (DBS) surgery and answer your questions. Pre-registration is required.

Among the topics covered will be: The goal of DBS, what happens when the neurosurgeon leaves the room (what to expect and how to prepare), dual therapy and how to blend DBS and medication, the pros and cons of fixed vs rechargeable batteries, symptom relief (how symptoms respond to DBS, how quickly and how well they respond over the long term), unexpected and surprising symptoms that DBS helps, programming (how it works, potential challenges and what to expect), developments and innovation in DBS, and much more. 

Here are the meeting details:

Where:
This program will be presented online and requires advance registration. Register. Note that the program will be recorded and you can view the program at a future date in the webinar archives.

When:
Wednesday, May 22, 11:00am-12:00pm

About the speaker: 
Helen Bronte-Stewart, MD, MS, is Director of  the Stanford Movement Disorders Center as well as the Director of Stanford Human Motor Control and Balance Laboratory. Dr. Bronte-Stewart received her bachelor’s degree in Mathematics and Physics from the University of York in England, her Master’s Degree in Bioengineering from the University of Pennsylvania, and her MD from the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine. Following her internship in medicine and residency in neurology at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania, Dr. Bronte-Stewart completed post-doctoral fellowships in movement disorders and in single unit electrophysiology and motor control with Dr. Stephen Lisberger, at the University of California in San Francisco. She is board certified in psychiatry and neurology. Her expertise in single neuronal electrophysiology in primates has been transferred to the operating room where she performs the intra-operative microelectrode mapping during deep brain stimulations (DBS) procedures.

Dr. Bronte-Stewart’s research goal is to understand how the brain controls movement. She developed computerized technology to measure human movement and currently uses this in conjunction with recordings of neuronal and neural network activity in the brain to correlate brain signals with different movements in Parkinson’s Disease, tremor and dystonia. She and her team have discovered that people with Parkinson’s Disease may have signature “brain arrhythmias” in the subthalamic nucleus in the brain. These rhythms are reduced by DBS at intensities that improve movement. She and her team are now investigating whether these rhythms are directly associated with abnormal movement and therefore whether that can be used as a biomarker for demand brain pacemakers, similar to demand cardiac pacemakers. They are also investigating whether this abnormal rhythm comes from the cortex and whether this will be another potential site for electrical stimulation to treat movement disorders. Dr. Bronte-Stewart is also very interested in balance and gait disorders and has an active research program in this area. Dr. Bronte-Stewart will be discussing details of her research in this presentation.

At the American Parkinson Disease Association Information and Referral Center at Stanford, we have extensive resources on Deep Brain Stimulation surgery on our webpage.  Please also visit our DBS Stories page to learn more from those who have had the surgery with first-hand accounts and videos of their experiences, You can also learn more about DBS at local DBS support groups that meet throughout Northern and Central California.