Lessons Learned from Open-label Deep Brain Stimulation for Tourette Syndrome: Eight Cases over 7 Years.

Background: Deep brain stimulation (DBS) remains an experimental but promising treatment for patients with severe refractory Gilles de la Tourette syndrome (TS). Controversial issues include the selection of patients (age and clinical presentation), the choice of brain targets to obtain optimal patient-specific outcomes, and the risk of surgery- and stimulation-related serious adverse events.

Methods: This report describes our open-label experience with eight patients with severe refractory malignant TS treated with DBS.

Deep brain stimulation in Tourette's syndrome.

A 48-year-old man with severe, lifelong Tourette's syndrome (TS) characterized by forceful self-injurious motor tics and obsessive-compulsive disorder was treated with bilateral deep brain stimulation (DBS). The decision to treat was based on his progressive neurological impairment (left sided weakness secondary to spinal cord injury) because of his relentless, violent head jerks. Electrodes were implanted at the level of the medial part of the thalamus (centromedian nucleus, the substantia periventricularis, and the nucleus ventro-oralis internus).

Carbamylated erythropoietin reduces radiosurgically-induced brain injury.

Gamma knife radiosurgery is an attractive noninvasive treatment of brain tumors and vascular malformations that minimizes collateral tissue damage. However, exposure of normal tissue to even low-dose radiation triggers a cascade of acute and chronic injury and potentially significant morbidity and mortality. Because many irradiated patients now survive for years, identifying methods to prevent radiotherapy-induced collateral tissue damage is a major focus of current research.

Malignant rhabdoid tumor in a pregnant adult female: literature review of central nervous system rhabdoid tumors.

Rhabdoid tumors of the central nervous system are uncommon, aggressive childhood malignancies. The 13 described adult cases comprise both primary CNS tumors and malignant transformation of previously existing gliomas, meningiomas, and astrocytomas. Central nervous system rhabdoid lesions of adults have been diagnosed as primary malignant rhabdoid tumors, atypical teratoid/rhabdoid tumors, and more recently, rhabdoid glioblastomas.