Key Points
- Neurosurgical Focus recently published a special issue on focused ultrasound and a video journal that includes articles about the technology.
- Proceedings from the Foundation’s 2023 Essential Tremor Brain Targeting Workshop were included.
Focused Ultrasound: Current and Future Indications
Neurosurgical Focus, a division of The Journal of Neurosurgery (JNS), recently published a special issue on focused ultrasound plus a video issue on movement disorders that includes focused ultrasound.
Edited by Rees Cosgrove, MD, Vibhor Krishna, MD, Kara Beasley, DO, and Nir Lipsman, MD, PhD, the focused ultrasound issue includes eight open-access articles. Importantly, the proceedings from the Foundation’s September 2023 Essential Tremor Brain Targeting Workshop were published with this group. The video journal includes three videos of patients treated for tremor.
“While the advantages of performing movement disorder surgery with high intensity MR-guided focused ultrasound are now well established, this publication highlights the fact that we are just starting to understand what focused ultrasound may be able to do for patients in the future,” said Dr. Cosgrove. “Early experience with lesioning in neuropsychiatric disorders, treatment of pediatric patients, blood-brain barrier opening, sonodynamic therapy, and even spinal applications for chronic back pain are just the beginning. We are clearly standing at the threshold of discovering new applications and more shall be revealed in the coming years.”
The articles in these special issues, which are all open access, cover the use of focused ultrasound to treat essential tremor, Parkinson’s disease, brain tumors, and pediatric applications, psychiatric disorders, and facet joint pain. An introduction has been written by the editors, and each article is hyperlinked below by topic:
Essential Tremor and Parkinson’s Disease
- Magnetic resonance–guided focused ultrasound in the treatment of refractory essential tremor: A systematic review and meta-analysis by Ali Mortezaei et al.
- Brain targeting for focused ultrasound essential tremor ablation: Proceedings from the 2023 Focused Ultrasound Foundation workshop by Melissa M. J. Chua et al.
- Minimum and early high-energy sonication protocol of MR-guided focused ultrasound thalamotomy for low–skull density ratio patients with essential tremor and Parkinson’s disease by Namiko Nishida et al.
- 3-T MR-guided focused ultrasound thalamotomy for tremor in patients with a cardiac pacemaker: Case series and review of the literature by Lain H. Gonzalez-Quarante et al.
- Video Journal: Four-tract tractography: multiparametric direct targeting of the dentatorubrothalamic tract by Andreas Seas et al.
- Video Journal: MRI-guided focused ultrasound for essential tremor by Alexander H. Agopyan-Miu et al.
- Video Journal: Magnetic resonance–guided focused ultrasound thalamotomy for tremor by Jason A. Chen et al.
Pediatrics
- MR-guided focused ultrasound in pediatric neurosurgery: Current insights, technical challenges, and lessons learned from 45 treatments at Children’s National Hospital by Gregory F. Keating et al.
Brain Tumors
- A review of sonodynamic therapy for brain tumors by Dana L. Hutton et al.
Psychiatric Disorders
- A systematic review of focused ultrasound for psychiatric disorders: Current applications, opportunities, and challenges by Matthew C. Henn et al.
Facet Joint Pain
- Focused ultrasound for the treatment of facet joint pain: A systematic review by Smruti Mahapatra et al.
The video journal is introduced by Andres M. Lozano, Ellen L. Air, Gordon H. Baltuch, and Francisco A. Ponce. See Advances in therapeutic lesioning in functional neurosurgery.
See JNS Neurosurgical Focus, Volume 57: Issue 3 (Sep 2024) Focused Ultrasound: Current and Future Indications
See JNS Neurosurgical Focus: Video, Volume 11: Issue 2 (Oct 2024) Movement Disorders