Who Is Eligible for Deep Brain Stimulation (DBS)?

Patients who no longer benefit from medicine and are healthy enough for surgery may be candidates for deep brain stimulation, says biomedical engineer and Johns Hopkins University professor Sri Sarma, PhD. Watch this video to learn more.

Transcript

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But typical candidates for DBS in the United States are candidates that have responded to medication

00:07

successfully, so they have gone on medications for a few years, and they are becoming refractory to the medication,

00:14

so now the side effects of the medications seem to outweigh the benefits of the medication itself.

00:20

And they don't have psychological-- they are not suffering from any other kind of psychological conditions. And those tend to be--

00:28

and they're young enough-- maybe under 80-- to undergo the surgery and actually able to go through the process with less risk.