For Parkinson’s Patients, a Surreal Brain Surgery Offers New Hope

Larry Clift, 74, of Chattanooga, lies on an operating table with a sheet of plastic draped across his forehead, nearly splitting the room in two. On one side, bright lights illuminate a dime-sized hole in the top of Clift’s skull, surrounded by a white ring of exposed bone and a small ooze of blood. If you look closely, you can see his brain….

For eight years, he has suffered from Parkinson’s disease, a disabling condition that has made his body stiff and weak. Relentless tremors have taken over his right arm, and doctors are certain they will spread to his left if they do not intervene. This operation, as surreal and terrifying as it may sound, is supposed to help. During four hours of surgery, a team of doctors place a tiny electrode deep within Clift’s skull, where electric shocks can stimulate the portion of his brain at the root of his disease. If the procedure works, his symptoms will fade with the flip of a switch. And maybe — just maybe — his tremors will never spread to his left arm at all. “Any time you have tremors,” Clift says, as doctors tinker inside his head, "and the shaking goes away, that’s a miracle.”

Clift was a recipient of deep brain stimulation surgery, which for two decades has been used as a last-resort treatment for patients with Parkinson’s disease, an incurable, degenerative condition that affects millions of people worldwide. But a new decadelong surgery study at Vanderbilt offers a glimmer of hope for younger Parkinson’s patients. Although still far from a cure, the surgery study provides some of the first evidence that any medical treatment can slow the progression of tremors, the signature symptom of the disease.