Essential tremor
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If you suffer from essential tremor – an uncontrollable shake in the body which is caused by incorrect electrical circuits in the brain – our neurology team can offer a variety of treatment options to help reduce the tremor severity.
As well as utilising drug therapy, surgery or deep brain stimulation, we are now able to offer a pioneering treatment at The Lindo Wing of St Mary’s, known as magnetic resonance (MR)-guided focused ultrasound, which is a non-invasive treatment that is done in an MRI scanner.
MR-guided Focused ultrasound can be used for a number of conditions, but Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust is the first to use this technology to treat symptoms arising from the brain. MR-guided focused ultrasound technology uses an MRI to guide powerful focused ultrasound to a very small point in the body. This creates an intense local heat at that point that destroys cells and breaks the circuit causing tremor, but does not impact other parts of the brain.
This pioneering treatment is performed at Imperial College Healthcare Private Care by Professor Dipankar Nandi, Dr Peter Bain and Professor Wladislaw Gedroyc who are the most experienced team in the UK at performing this procedure.
Fast recovery, immediate success
The procedure takes place under local anaesthetic and you will need a one night hospital stay afterwards. There is a period of about one month afterwards when you may notice some minor issues with balance that gradually improve and we advise you not to drive for one month after the procedure.
The treatment works immediately (with patients experiencing an average of 75 reduction in tremors) and the results are usually long-lasting.
World-class expertise
The Trust team are pioneers in the use of MR-guided focused ultrasound, as one of the first centres in the world to carry out these procedures on a regular basis. We have devised several new applications of the technology which are now used regularly around the world as standard treatments.
The Trust also has one of the largest movement disorder neurology units in the UK and is a national referral centre for the treatment of patients with essential tremor and associated conditions. Our neurosurgeons and neurologists are some of the most eminent practitioners in this field in the world. By uniting our unique expertise with this new cutting-edge technology, we can provide immense benefits to people with essential tremor.