Objective: To compare the clinical characteristics of essential tremor (ET) and Parkinson’s disease (PD) patients who underwent deep brain stimulation (DBS) surgery to those of patients who had not undergone surgery.

Background: Only a minority of ET and PD patients undergo DBS surgery. Data on patient selection factors are of value.

Methods: We abstracted data from the electronic medical records of 121 PD and 34 ET patients who underwent DBS surgery at Columbia University Medical Center from 2009 to 2014. We compared this group to 100 randomly-selected PD and 100 randomly-selected ET patients at the Center who had not undergone DBS surgery.

Results: Among other differences, PD patients who had undergone surgery had a younger age of onset than those who did not: 14.9% vs. 3.0% had onset before age 40 (p = 0.003). They had also tried nearly double the number of medications (3.9 ± 1.7 vs. 2.3 ± 1.5, p<0.001). Interestingly, there was no difference in the proportion with tremor (81.0% vs. 88.0%, p = 0.16). Medical comorbidities (heart and lungs) were less common in the PD patients who underwent DBS surgery. In the ET group, tremor causing impairment in activities of daily living occurred in all surgical patients and only 73.0% of non-surgical patients (p<0.001). The former had tried nearly double the number of medications compared to the latter (3.2 ± 1.7 vs. 1.3 ± 1.3, p<0.001).

Conclusions: These data add to our understanding of the numerous clinical factors associated with patients’ referral to DBS surgery.

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MDS Abstracts - https://www.mdsabstracts.org/abstract/clinical-characteristics-of-parkinsons-disease-and-essential-tremor-patients-undergoing-deep-brain-stimulation-surgery-five-year-data-from-columbia-university-medical-center-2009-2014/