UFMDC at Movement Disorders Society conference in
Rome
Michael Okun, M.D., Hubert Fernandez, M.D. and Kelly Foote, M.D.
attended the Movement
Disorders Congress in Rome last month. They
presented 5 posters of interest to their colleagues.
- The Florida Surgical Questionnaire for Parkinson's
Disease (FLASQ-PD) - Deep Brain Stimulation
teams (including the one at the University of Florida) get many
referrals of surgical candidates from outside physicians. The
FLASQ-PD was created to assist general practitioners and general
neurologists in choosing who to refer for DBS surgery.
- The FLASQ-PD generates a score that determines whether
a patient is a good candidate or not.
- The FLASQ-PD is a quick assessment tool to identify patients
for a multidisciplinary surgical workup.
- A paper and the FLASQ-PD itself will be published this
month.
- DBS for Restless Legs - Both Dystonia and Restless
Legs Syndrome can be improved with GPi DBS
- Pseudobulbar Depression - During
the microelectrode recording portion of a deep brain stimulation
surgery, one patient began to cry though they were not sad. Since
the microelectrode only affects a few cells at a time, this means
it was very near the cells that caused this reaction.
- HD in only one twin - One person in this set
of twins has had HD symptoms for 8 years. The other is yet to manifest
any symptoms. There are some possible environmental and lifestyle
causes for this difference.
- Levodopa-induced psychosis -
A short study to determine if patients who have a psychosis induced
by Levadopa could be weaned off of their antipsychotics. Three
patients had worse psychotic episiodes than their original one.
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