Probabilistic Refinement of Focused Ultrasound Thalamotomy Targeting for Parkinson's Disease Tremor.

Background: There remains high variability in clinical outcomes when the same magnetic resonance image-guided focused ultrasound (MRgFUS) thalamotomy target is used for both essential tremor (ET) and tremor-dominant Parkinson's disease (TDPD).

Objective: Our goal is to refine the MRgFUS thalamotomy target for TDPD versus ET.

Methods: We retrospectively performed voxel-wise efficacy and structural connectivity mapping using 3-12-month post-procedure hand tremor scores for a multicenter cohort of 32 TDPD patients and a previously published cohort of 79 ET patients, and 24-hour T1-weighted post-MRgFUS brain images.

Essential Tremor - Deep Brain Stimulation vs. Focused Ultrasound.

Introduction: Essential Tremor (ET) is one of the most common tremor syndromes typically presented as action tremor, affecting mainly the upper limbs. In at least 30-50% of patients, tremor interferes with quality of life, does not respond to first-line therapies and/or intolerable adverse effects may occur. Therefore, surgery may be considered.

Evaluation of the complete Sniffin Sticks Test versus its subtests in differentiating Parkinson's disease patients from healthy controls.

Background: Hyposmia is one of the most common, as well as the first nonmotor condition in Parkinson disease (PD). The sniffin sticks test (SST) evaluates three different aspects of olfactory function: threshold (T), discrimination (D), and identification (I). The sum of the scores of these three subtests produce a global score of olfaction, the Threshold-Discrimination-Identification (TDI) score.

Very early-onset behavioral variant frontotemporal dementia in a patient with a variant of uncertain significance of a gene mutation.

The behavioral variant of Frontotemporal dementia (bvFTD) has typically a progressive course with cognitive and behavioral changes that manifests between 50 and 70 years. Very early-onset bvFTD with rapid progression is a rare syndrome under the frontotemporal lobar degeneration (FTLD) umbrella that has been associated with a variety of protein deposition and genetic mutations. We present a case of a 24-year-old man who developed behavioral symptoms and progressed with severe cognitive impairment and functional loss within months.

Systematic review and meta-analysis of Sniffin Sticks Test performance in Parkinson's disease patients in different countries.

Introduction: Olfaction impairment occurs in about 90% of patients with Parkinson's disease. The Sniffin Sticks Test is a widely used instrument to measure olfactory performance and is divided into three subtests that assess olfactory threshold, discrimination and identification. However, cultural and socioeconomic differences can influence test performance.