2004 Volume 13 Issue 5 Pages 368-375
Deep brain stimulation (DBS) of the subthalamic nucleus (STN) is a good treatment of choice for patients with advanced Parkinson's disease, where motor fluctuations affects their daily activities. STN-DBS improves their off-stage motor symptoms, and also achieves their equivalent on〜stage with a lower L-DOPA dosage. The STN-DBS improves almost all cardinal symptoms of Parkinson's disease, and its spectrum of clinical effect resembles to that of L-DOPA. Axial symptoms and freezing improve less with STN-DBS than other motor symptoms. And no improvement is expected with STN-DBS in end-stage patients, where the administration of L-DOPA does not improve their symptoms. Though GPi-DBS also provides improvement of off-stage symptoms, their degree of improvement does not exceed those of STN-DBS. Several authors report postoperative confusion, depression, and impairment of higher cortical function as complications of STN-DBS, which was little reported with GPi-DBS.
