Week 5: Summer Immersion

 This week I got the chance to see surgery performed by Dr. Kaplitt. The surgery is the focused ultrasound for essential tremor. The aim is to target and destroy a small region of the brain tissue responsible for essential tremor without any opening through the skull. Since Dr. Kaplitt's specialty is in Parkinson Disease, his patients for this ultrasound treatment are mostly TDPD, tremor-dominant Parkinson's disease. Before the treatment, the patient's head was shaved well without any hair that can interfere with the wave of ultrasound. Then a stereotactic frame was attached to the skull with local anesthesia. The patient was sent to MRI room and accepted the treatment under the guidance of transcranial magnetic resonance. Later on, doctor calibrated and fixed the angle of the brain for the ultrasound target. Then the ultrasound with increasing frequency was applied to the patient to achieve certain temperatures. The temperature that could make a lesion in the brain was around 50 degree C according to their experience. It was amazing that after several rounds, the patient immediately got better, and his hand stopped shaking! The patient was still conscious during the operation. From the MRI image, the lesion in the brain was formed. Moreover, the machine just arrived this January and started to make good progress. How technology and medical surgery is closely connected really inspires me.

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