Effective thalamic deep brain stimulation for neuropathic tremor in a patient with severe demyelinating neuropathy
- 1Centre of Neurology and Hertie Institute for Clinical Brain Research, University of Tübingen, Germany
- 2Department of Neuroradiology, University of Tübingen, Germany
- 3Department of Neurosurgery, University of Tübingen, Germany
- Dr R Krüger, Centre of Neurology and Hertie Institute for Clinical Brain Research, Hoppe-Seyler-Str 3, 72076 Tübingen, Germany; rejko.krueger{at}uni-tuebingen.de
- Received 27 January 2008
- Revised 7 April 2008
- Accepted 16 May 2008
Abstract
Postural and action tremor in peripheral neuropathy is characteristic of Roussy–Levy syndrome. A patient with a severe demyelinating neuropathy and disabling neuropathic tremor successfully treated by deep brain stimulation (DBS) is reported. Disease onset was at age 63 years with sensory symptoms and slight action tremor. Within the following 9 years a severe, drug resistant, postural and action tremor developed rendering the patient unable to feed himself. At age 72 years the patient was treated by bilateral DBS of the ventral intermediate thalamic nucleus, with a useful 30% reduction in tremor. The clinical benefit of the stimulation remained stable over a 1 year postoperative observation period.
Footnotes
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‣ A supplementary video is published online only at http://jnnp.bmj.com/content/vol80/issue2
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S Breit and T Wächter contributed equally to this work.
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Ethics approval: The work of RK is supported by a grant from the German Research Council (DFG; KR2119/3-1).
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Competing interests: None.
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Ethics approval: Ethics approval was obtained.
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Patient consent: Obtained.
