Session Information
Date: Monday, June 20, 2016
Session Title: Surgical therapy: Parkinson's disease
Session Time: 12:30pm-2:00pm
Location: Exhibit Hall located in Hall B, Level 2
Objective: To assess the degree and pattern of cognitive changes following Deep Brain Stimulation (DBS) in patients with Parkinson’s disease (PD), Dystonia and Essential Tremor (ET).
Background: Despite having been in clinical use for over 25 years, there is still no agreement on the specific cognitive changes that occur as a result of DBS in patients with movement disorders. It has been suggested that cognitive changes are not homogenous amongst patients, but this is yet to be demonstrated. Several studies have looked at different possible predictors of cognitive decline in PD patients, though with little concordance between studies. Additionally, only few studies have investigated cognitive change following DBS in patients with Dystonia and ET.
Methods: In this study, 18 PD, 11 Dystonia and 10 ET patients, were cognitively assessed before and after a mean duration of 7.4 months DBS therapy using standardised validated neuropsychological tests. Six key cognitive domains were analysed: General Intellectual Function, Memory, Attention, Language, Visuoperceptual Functioning and Executive Function.
Results: Executive Function demonstrates a trend to decline following DBS (most notably in PD and ET patients) although not in all patients. Conversely, Memory shows a tendency to improve after DBS. Patients whose cognitive domains declined to ‘impaired range’ in an assessment test following DBS had significantly lower baseline assessment scores, in comparison to those who did not.
Conclusions: The degree of cognitive changes following DBS in PD, Dystonia and ET patients are heterogeneous and include both worsening and improvement in certain domains. Patients who have impairment in a domain at baseline seem to be more likely to further decline. Further investigation is needed to validate these potential predictors of cognitive decline identified, to determine long term changes of cognition post-DBS in Dystonia and ET patients and to analyse the impact this cognitive change has on patient function.
To cite this abstract in AMA style:
J. Khan, Z. Quamhawi, Y.F. Tai, P.G. Bain, D. Nandi, S. Gunning, N. Pavese. Cognitive change following deep brain stimulation in patients with movement disorders [abstract]. Mov Disord. 2016; 31 (suppl 2). https://www.mdsabstracts.org/abstract/cognitive-change-following-deep-brain-stimulation-in-patients-with-movement-disorders/. Accessed May 16, 2025.« Back to 2016 International Congress
MDS Abstracts - https://www.mdsabstracts.org/abstract/cognitive-change-following-deep-brain-stimulation-in-patients-with-movement-disorders/