INNOVATORS Gold Award - New Orleans City Business

MEDICAL
Deep Brain Stimulation
Ochsner Health System
Key innovation: a technology that sends electric pulses
to pinpointed areas of the brain that cause uncontrolled
movements
Clients: New Orleans area patients with movement
disorders
Where they’re based: New Orleans
Top executives: Dr. Jayaraman Rao, neurosurgeon, and
Dr. Roger Smith, chairman of Ochsner Health System’s
neurosurgery department
Year introduced: February 2008
DOCTORS IN THE neurosurgery department at Ochsner
Health System have grasped a technological advancement
that is changing the way brain surgeons treat patients with
movement disorders such as Parkinson’s disease or familial
tremors.
Dr. Roger Smith, chairman of the neurosurgery department
at Ochsner, said he and fellow neurosurgeon Dr.
Jayaraman Rao have been using Deep Brain Stimulation to
send electric pulses to pinpointed areas of the brain that
cause uncontrolled movements. The doctors say it is a revolutionary
treatment that has changed the way neurosurgeons
operate on patients with movement disorders.
“In the past, surgeons who were treating diseases like
Parkinson’s would have to go into the brain and damage
small areas causing the movements,” Smith said. “It was
once thought that freezing these parts of the brain could
help patients control certain tremors, but it was not
always the case.”
Smith said the process comes from the same technology
used for certain spinal cord injuries. He said doctors
believed the technology had the potential to transfer over
successfully.
“At this stage of research, it is my belief that when the
electrodes are placed on the brain, the stimulation does
something to block the movements from happening,” Smith
said. “In treatments we have done at Ochsner, patients with
severe Parkinson’s tremors end up seeing a dramatic
decrease in movement to where it stops almost instantly.”
The new procedure enables doctors to be more precise
when searching out target areas of the brain. Smith said the
stimulation uses a smaller sensor to determine exactly where
the electrode needs to go. He also said the procedure can be
altered or reversed if changes needed to be made.
“The reversibility is a stark difference from the way surgeons
used to treat these diseases,” Smith said. “When
doctors go in to do the damage procedure, there is no way
to reverse it.”
Smith said doctors at Ochsner have been using the
stimulation method since February and have seen about 15
patients. The procedure is not exclusive to Ochsner, however,
because Rao said he had been using the technology
for several years at Louisiana State University.
“The technology has been around since the early ’90s,”
Rao said. “It is technology that is in the early stages. So
early, in fact, that we still are not quite sure how it works.
We just know it works and works well.”•
— Robin Shannon
PHOTO BY FRANK AYMAMI
Drs. Roger Smith, left, and Jayaraman Rao review a brain scan to pinpoint where they need to apply deep brain stimulation.
New Orleans CityBusiness 37A