Publications by authors named "A F G Leentjens"
Background: Since 2013, deep brain stimulation (DBS) has been reimbursed in the Netherlands as a proven effective treatment for treatment-resistant obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD). Nevertheless, DBS is still rarely applied, and a national Dutch treatment protocol is lacking.
Aim: To prepare a nationwide multidisciplinary treatment protocol for the application of DBS in the treatment of treatment-resistant OCD.
Article Synopsis
- Researchers are looking for better ways to treat people with Parkinson's disease by using their specific symptoms and risks to choose treatments.
- Experts from a group called the Movement Disorders Society made 19 recommendations on how to customize treatment based on individual patient characteristics.
- These recommendations help doctors consider future challenges, like memory problems, and how to prevent worsening symptoms, but they are not strict rules and can be changed for each patient.
The International Parkinson and Movement Disorder Society (MDS) created a task force (TF) to provide a critical overview of the Parkinson's disease (PD) subtyping field and develop a guidance on future research in PD subtypes. Based on a literature review, we previously concluded that PD subtyping requires an ultimate alignment with principles of precision medicine, and consequently novel approaches were needed to describe heterogeneity at the individual patient level. In this manuscript, we present a novel purpose-driven framework for subtype research as a guidance to clinicians and researchers when proposing to develop, evaluate, or use PD subtypes.
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- Deep brain stimulation (DBS) is being explored as an effective treatment for severe obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD), with various potential targets in the brain, especially around the anterior limb of the internal capsule and ventral striatum.
- A study involving 82 OCD patients identified two key stimulation sites linked to significant symptom improvements: one near the anterior limb of the internal capsule and another near the inferior thalamic peduncle, while also showing that stimulation at certain locations can lead to better outcomes for depression and anxiety.
- The findings suggest that refining the targeting of DBS could enhance treatment effectiveness and help optimize DBS programming for patients already receiving therapy.
Background: Deep brain stimulation (DBS) is a highly efficient, evidence-based therapy to alleviate symptoms and improve quality of life in movement disorders such as Parkinson's disease, essential tremor, and dystonia, which is also being applied in several psychiatric disorders, such as obsessive-compulsive disorder and depression, when they are otherwise resistant to therapy.
Summary: At present, DBS is clinically applied in the so-called open-loop approach, with fixed stimulation parameters, irrespective of the patients' clinical state(s). This approach ignores the brain states or feedback from the central nervous system or peripheral recordings, thus potentially limiting its efficacy and inducing side effects by stimulation of the targeted networks below or above the therapeutic level.