Advanced Treatment for Dystonia

Deep-brain stimulation is a last resort for the management of dystonia or dystonic movement disorders when oral or injectable therapies do not provide adequate relief to allow an acceptable quality of life. The underlying pathogenesis of dystonia is less well understood than in Parkinson’s disease, in which deep-brain stimulation is generally expected to provide effective and long-lasting benefit. Furthermore, it is likely that dystonia represents a number of different basal ganglia pathologies. The response of dystonia to deep-brain stimulation is typically delayed for up to weeks or months following a change in stimulation parameters. All of these factors make it more difficult to predict outcomes in dystonia following deep-brain stimulation, thus making patient selection all the more important.