Lesioning Procedures for Movement Disorders

Dystonia is a rare syndrome with varying etiologies. Similarly, tremor conditions refractory to medical management and disabling that they need surgical interventions are rare in our setting. So far there are no randomized controlled trials of pallidotomy for management of dystonia. There is scant literature on the long term efficacy and safety of Pallidotomy, thalamotomy and other such lesioning procedures in the management of movement disorders. The current literature is significantly plagued by publication bias as case reports with successful outcomes are likely to be selectively published in journals or conference abstracts. Lesioning procedures though seem to be effective are often considered to be risky, especially bilateral pallidotomy is not preferred by several centres. However, our center routinely performs simultaneous bilateral pallidotomy. To generate long term data on the efficacy and safety of lesioning procedures in rare diseases like dystonias especially the effect of functional neurosurgery on varying etiologies of the disease, robust registries are required which collect data on all consecutive patients who undergo the procedure.