Neurological sciences : official journal of the Italian Neurological Society and of the Italian Society of Clinical Neurophysiology
-
Multicenter Study
Multicenter study report: electrophysiological monitoring procedures for subthalamic deep brain stimulation surgery in Parkinson's disease.
Despite the wide diffusion of subthalamic deep brain stimulation (STN-DBS) for Parkinson's disease, systematic practical recommendations for intraoperative electrophysiological monitoring are still lacking. In this paper, a shared protocol for intraoperative electrophysiological monitoring arising from the meetings of a panel of neurophysiologists of the DBS Study Group of the Italian Neurological Society is proposed. Intraoperative monitoring is composed by microrecordings and functional stimulation. ⋯ Functional stimulation is used to assess the clinical efficacy and the side effects induced by STN-DBS at different positions. Based on the therapeutic window, an algorithm to find the optimal target is proposed. The procedures for intraoperative monitoring for STN-DBS proposed here are safe, relatively cheap, take approximately 30-40 min per side and could offer valuable additional information to the surgeon.