Córdoba (EFE).- The Reina Sofía University Hospital, in Córdoba, has incorporated a non-invasive treatment that totally or largely eliminates tremor, known as movement disorders, suffered by patients with neurological diseases that affect their quality of life.
So far, since it began to work in November 2022, with HIFU (High Intensity Focal Ultrasound, for its name in English), twelve patients have been treated, eight men and four women, with an average age of 71 years. as reported this Friday at a press conference by the head of the Neurology Service of the Cordovan hospital, Mayte Cáceres.
Of these, nine have experienced the complete elimination of tremor and three a reduction of up to 70 percent, as revealed by the Minister of Health and Consumption, Catalina García, for whom with the incorporation of an improvement in the Public Health System “It can rarely be seen and patients can experience such a significant change.”
other communities
García highlighted that with this implementation Andalusia joins the public services of the other four autonomous communities that have developed this technique, Madrid, Galicia, Catalonia and the Basque Country, while he considered it necessary to value “how the System, not only with infrastructures, but also with technology and like today’s, which has come to change the lives of Andalusians”.
The managing director of the hospital, Valle García, specified that there are only four other private centers that carry out this treatment in Spain, in Madrid, Catalonia, the Valencian Community and Navarra.
For the head of the center, “it has been hard work, for a long time”, the result of a project that contemplated not only the implementation of the necessary technology within the MRI, but also “the complete circuit of patient care, which I believe It’s what has the most value.”
novel treatment
For Mayte Cáceres, who is also responsible for advanced therapy consultations for movement disorders at the Reina Sofía University Hospital, HIFU is a “very new, minimally invasive treatment, especially in Andalusia”, which “consists of performing a lesion on a area of the brain that we know is involved in the production of tremor, for which high-intensity focused ultrasound guided by magnetic resonance is used.
To do this, he explained that “before the patient receives treatment, he must be evaluated in advanced therapy consultations, where the refractoriness of the treatment is determined, from tremor to conventional treatments and the impact that tremor has on the quality of patients’ lives.
“In general, they are patients who have great difficulty performing basic activities such as eating or writing due to the tremor,” he stressed.
multidisciplinary assessment
Cáceres specified that “once the clinical studies have been completed, the patient is evaluated by a multidisciplinary team”, which includes the former Health Minister in the Government of Susana Díaz, Marina Álvarez, when the current counselor was parliamentary spokesperson for the PP on the matter, wanted to highlight Catalina García.
The team, said the person in charge of Neurology, “composed of physicians from Neurology, Neurosurgery and Neuroradiology, determines the suitability of the case and, if it is a good clinical and radiological candidate, they proceed to plan the treatment, indicated in patients with refractory essential tremor and with Parkison’s disease, as long as the tremor is the main symptom or the disabling symptom of the disease”.
For the patient, who is discharged the same day or in the following twenty-four hours, “it is a non-invasive treatment, which avoids having to perform a craniotomy and place intracranial devices, he is awake throughout the procedure, which It allows us to observe the improvement of the tremor, which is immediate after receiving the treatment”.
Advances in the management of complex pathologies
In addition, the head of Neurology at the Córdoba health center pointed out, “the adverse effects that may appear are transient and are related to the fact that inflammation may appear around the area of the lesion.”
Mayte Cáceres highlighted the fact that the Hospital de Córdoba can receive patients from anywhere in Andalusia or the rest of Spain and that a multidisciplinary team participates in the process in which, in addition to doctors, nursing staff and technicians radiodiagnosis.
In his opinion, “it represents an advance in the management of complex pathologies where the sum of the knowledge of the different professionals offers an opportunity to improve people’s quality of life and represents an example of the transfer of research and technological advances towards the population, allowing them to recover health and autonomy”.
First patient treated
The first patient to receive the treatment based on high-intensity focused ultrasound was Domingo García García, a retired taxi driver, a native of Monturque although he has lived in Córdoba for half a century, whose problem with tremors began at the age of 48. , and that he has regained the ability to use his right hand normally, after having to learn to do essential things in life, such as eating, with his left hand.
“I’m not left-handed, but I had to adapt to the left hand, because it’s the one I had the best, the right was a mess,” he said today during the presentation of the preview.
For him, “with this disease, adapting to eating with my left hand, I saw myself and wanted myself,” he confessed. Now she has returned to doing DIY, an activity with which she is distracted and relaxed. “I’m great,” she stressed. EFE
Web edition: Fátima Santos
I don’t think the title of your article matches the content lol. Just kidding, mainly because I had some doubts after reading the article.