Oscar winner shares treatment journey – and thanks Trust staff
Lord Julian Fellowes, the Oscar-winning screenwriter behind Downton Abbey, has shared his experience of being treated for essential tremor at St Mary's Hospital – and expressed his gratitude to the team who looked after him.
Lord Fellowes, who is honorary president of the National Tremor Foundation, has struggled with essential tremor for over a decade. He hopes that sharing his story in a new film of his treatment at St Mary’s will make more people aware of essential tremor and the treatment options available.
Essential tremor causes uncontrollable shaking in a part of the body, which can have a huge impact on daily activities and quality of life. There are over one million people affected by essential tremor in Britain and around 250,000 people are severely disabled by their tremors.
For Lord Fellowes, it made everyday tasks such as eating, drinking and socialising very difficult – and caused stress and anxiety. It even meant that he lost the ability to write with his hand.
There are various treatments available, including medication, surgery and deep brain stimulation. After medication proved ineffective for Lord Fellowes, he successfully underwent a relatively new treatment at St Mary’s called Magnetic Resonance (MR) guided Focused Ultrasound (MRgFUS). This is an incisionless treatment where the clinical team direct up to 1,000 ultrasound beams through the head to a 1mm focal point deep within the brain where the neurons that are responsible for sending the faulty signals are located. The ultrasound beams generate heat at the focal point, which in turn creates a permanent lesion to block the faulty signals.
MR-guided Focused Ultrasound has been used to treat a number of conditions over the years. Imperial College Healthcare were the first to trial MRgFUS in the UK as a treatment for symptoms arising from the brain, using specialist equipment from Insightec that was acquired thanks to a grant from Imperial Health Charity in 2017. The treatment was subsequently approved for wider use in the NHS in 2021 and is now offered at select centres including at St Mary’s.
The first thing that Lord Fellowes wrote by hand after the treatment was a thank-you note to the hospital staff who looked after him.
“They need you conscious during the whole thing. They need you to answer questions. It does mean you have to feel a certain amount of pain, but it doesn’t last very long.
“I think if I was talking to someone who was considering having the treatment, I would say to them really, that for me, my life is much more normal again, because it worked. For me at least, this was worth it, and I haven’t regretted it for one second.”
The film features a number of Trust staff who cared for Lord Fellowes, including Dr Peter Bain, Professor Dipankar Nandi, Mr Neekhil Patel, Dr Brynmor Jones, and Andy Worsley.
Dr Peter Bain is a consultant neurologist who led Julian's treatment at Imperial College Healthcare Private Care, part of Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust. He is also a trustee of the National Tremor Foundation. He said: "We treated Lord Fellowes at St Mary's Hospital earlier this year, in our MR-Guided Focus Ultrasound suite.
"We treated the tremor in his right arm by firing ultrasound beams into a specific area of the brain called the thalamus. The procedure was a success and i'm really pleased that the tremor is greatly reduced, with no adverse effects.
"It's not easy to convey the huge impact that essential tremor can have on someone's life, including for Lord Fellowes. I’m really delighted that we could help him, including of course helping him regain the ability to write with a pen again."
Professor Dipankar Nandi, a consultant neurosurgeon at Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust, was also involved in Lord Fellowes treatment. He said: “Essential tremor is often misunderstood and its impact underestimated.
“MR-guided focused ultrasound is a proven, safe, and effective incisionless option for patients who do not find relief with medication. By sharing Julian Fellowes’ story, we hope to raise visibility of the condition and encourage broader access to innovative treatments for movement disorders.”
Professor Wladyslaw Gedroyc, consultant radiologist at Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust, said: "Essential tremor is an incredibly debilitating condition that can dramatically affect a person’s quality of life.
“I’m delighted we can support this film and the National Tremor Foundation’s awareness work. It's important that patients are aware that there are a number of treatment options, including MRI-guided Focused Ultrasound which was first trialled in the UK at our Trust."
Kitty Reilly, chair of the National Tremor Foundation, said: “It is so encouraging to see that there are now advanced treatments such as MRgFUS available to those in desperate need of a solution. Affecting both adults and children, there are more than a million in the UK impacted by essential tremor.”
“Essential tremor is a condition that renders challenging activities of daily life that most of us simply take for granted, so for our honorary president Lord Fellowes to be able to regain his ability to write again is simply wonderful.”
Maurice R. Ferré, MD, CEO and chairman of Insightec, said: “Julian Fellowes’ story shines a light on what many people living with essential tremor experience every day: the frustration of losing simple abilities that most of us take for granted.
“Insightec’s focused ultrasound offers patients a safe, incisionless option that can truly change lives, and we are proud to see it restoring confidence and independence for people like Lord Fellowes.”
For more information on essential tremor, visit the National Tremor Foundation website.
The Trust offers treatment for essential tremor on the NHS and at Imperial College Healthcare Private Care.
