Over the past week there has been quite a bit of press covering MRgFUS and related techniques to treat depression. I will point to a few of the more interesting items in this post.
This article talks about MRgFUS and the potential that it has for really revolutionizing medicine. Not only can it be used to treat Essential Tremors, Parkinson's Disease and depression, but it can be used to open the blood-brain barrier (BBB) and treat many other conditions from brain cancer to Alzheimer's.
This is a good article on some of the more advanced treatments for depression. It talks about Electro-Convulsive Therapy (ECT, or electro-shock treatments), repetitive Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation (rTMS), Focused Ultrasound Surgery (FUS) and Magnetic Seizure Therapy (MST). Of those mentioned in the article, I have had ECT, rTMS and now FUS. They won't do MST on me because they have discovered that it doesn't work on patients with both depression and anxiety. The picture in the article is a good one of a patient getting ready for FUS. She has the frame bolted to her head and they are putting the rubber diaphragm over her head.
Finally, here is a video highlighting some of the revolutionary work that they are doing with MRgFUS at Toronto's Sunnybrook Hospital.
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