Ultrasound Treatment Stops Parkinson’s Tremor | Earth Science

First they have to scan Joe's brain to find the spot they need to focus the beams on. They're aiming to burn out a tiny bit of the region called the thalamus, right in the middle of the brain, which is responsible for the unwanted tremor. The key really with this kind of surgery is that it's all in the preparation, so all of these hours are spent making sure that the MRI and the transducer and the patient are perfectly in line with each other. Dr Elias has to be certain that the invisible beams are going to meet at exactly the right spot in Joe's brain before he turns the power up. He and the other specialists are constantly going in to check Joe's condition, because Joe's perfectly conscious and talking throughout. Now it's going to increase the intensity of the ultrasound and hopefully we should start to see a difference in the patient's tremor. Sonication number three. Everything looks really good from the imaging perspective and the clinical perspective. Here you can see the area that has been heated, and the temperature is about 57 degrees at the hot spot. He still has some tremor. We'll treat more. Sonication number 15. And after four painstaking hours, they feel their job's done. If this surgery has been as successful as they hope, Joe will never need to return for more treatment. He's doing really well. He's cheerful. I'm quite flabbergasted by what we've seen happening here today, to see a man awake and comfortable and conscious throughout a treatment like this. Joe may be in high spirits, but the extent of the success of his procedure isn't immediately obvious. The next morning, I catch up with him and his wife. Morning, Joe and Mary. You've had a night's sleep now. How are you feeling today? I feel like it was a miracle, in a sense. Just for our benefit, would you mind just showing me how your hands are when you lift them up? Yeah, all right. That's astonishing. Do you think you're going to be doing that to everyone you see for the next week or so now? Probably. Although not a cure for Parkinson's, the ultrasound appears to have made a remarkable difference to Joe's tremor. And there are around a million people in the UK living with a tremor like his. I feel really astonished by what I've seen here in Virginia. I saw a man turn up yesterday for really what was a very serious operation. You know, in bold terms, he was having a hole burned in his brain. And I saw him come out of the scanner at the end and chat away to us as if nothing really very big had happened. And then I suppose most amazing of all was to see a man who had had a violent tremor in one of his hands, able to hold that hand completely still. And I just think that the whole overall wonder of that is something I won't be forgetting for a very long time. Joe has continued to live without disabling tremor since his treatment. Ultrasound surgery is already being used in the UK for a number of procedures in other parts of the body. But its use in the brain for removing tremors is still in clinical trials.