Implantation of electrodes for deep brain stimulation of the subthalamic nucleus in advanced Parkinson's disease with the aid of intraoperative microrecording under general anesthesia.

OBJECTIVE: Deep brain stimulation (DBS) is widely accepted in the treatment of advanced Parkinson's disease (PD) and other movement disorders. The standard implantation procedure is performed under local anesthesia (LA). Certain groups of patients may not be eligible for surgery under LA because of clinical reasons, such as massive fear, reduced cooperativity, or coughing attacks. Microrecording (MER) has been shown to be helpful in DBS surgery. The purpose of this study was to evaluate the feasibility of MER for DBS surgery under general anesthesia (GA) and to compare the data of intraoperative MER as well as the clinical data with that of the current literature of patients undergoing operation under LA. CLINICAL PRESENTATION: The data of nine patients with advanced PD (mean Hoehn and Yahr status, 4.2) who were operated with subthalamic nucleus (STN) DBS under GA, owing to certain clinical circumstances ruling out DBS under LA, were retrospectively analyzed. All operations were performed under analgosedation with propofol or remifentanil and intraoperative MER. For MER, remifentanil was ceased completely and propofol was lowered as far as possible. INTERVENTION: The STN could be identified intraoperatively in all patients with MER. The typical bursting pattern was identified, whereas a widening of the baseline noise could not be as adequately detected as in patients under LA. The daily off phases of the patients were reduced from 50 to 17%, whereas the Unified Parkinson's Disease Rating Scale III score was reduced from 43 (preoperative, medication off) to 19 (stimulation on, medication off) and 12 (stimulation on, medication on). Two patients showed a transient neuropsychological deterioration after surgery, but both also had preexisting episodes of disorientation. One implantable pulse generator infection was noticed. No further significant clinical complications were observed. CONCLUSION: STN surgery for advanced PD with MER guidance is possible with good clinical results under GA. Intraoperative MER of the STN region can be performed under GA with a special anesthesiological protocol. In this setting, the typical STN bursting pattern can be identified, whereas the typical widening of the background noise baseline while entering the STN region is obviously absent. This technique may enlarge the group of patients eligible for STN surgery. Although the clinical improvements and parameter settings in this study were within the range of the current literature, further randomized controlled studies are necessary to compare the results of STN DBS under GA and LA, respectively.