A team of researchers working at the MR-Center of the University Children's Hospital in Zürich has completed a pilot study using transcranial MR-guided focused ultrasound to treat 10 patients with neuropathic pain.

The origin of chronic pain in these patients included post amputation phantom limb syndrome, nerve injury, stroke, trigeminal neuralgia and post herpetic neuralgia from shingles.

“By eliminating any physical penetration into the brain, we hope to duplicate the therapeutic effects of invasive deep brain ablation without the side effects, and for a wider group of patients.”

The preliminary results in these patients are consistent with conventional therapy - radiofrequency ablation - which is an invasive procedure and involves making an incision in the scalp, drilling a hole in the skull, inserting an electrode through normal brain tissue into the thalamus, and using radiofrequency to create the lesion.

“This research demonstrates that transcranial MR-guided focused ultrasound can be used non-invasively to produce small thermal ablations with extreme precision and accuracy deep in the brain,” comments Neal Kassell, M.D., a neurosurgeon at the University of Virginia, and Chairman of the Focused Ultrasound Surgery Foundation. “It paves the way for further research into the treatment of a variety of other brain disorders, including Parkinson's disease and essential tremor, epilepsy, brain tumors and stroke,”

According to Dr Kassell, the key advantage of focused ultrasound is that it is non-invasive. This in principle makes it safer than conventional surgery because it avoids the associated risks of complications such as infection, hemorrhage, and collateral damage to normal brain structures.

Source: Focused Ultrasound Surgery Foundation