Barts and The London Centre for Neurosciences | Our services | Neurostimulation
Neurostimulation
For full details of our neurostimulation service, please click here to visit our dedicated website.
Neurostimulation is a technique that is used to relieve pain and counteract the symptoms of conditions like Parkinson’s disease or epilepsy.
It involves inserting small ‘pacemakers’ under the skin, attaching them to peripheral nerves, the spinal cord or the brain to deliver periodic low voltage electrical stimulation. The electrical stimulation blocks the sensation of pain and can have an anti-seizure effect without the common sedative side effects of anti epileptic mediations. In some cases patients have magnets they can pass over the surface of the skin to turn the stimulator on if, for example, they know they are about to have an epileptic episode.
Barts and The London Centre for Neurosciences was one of the first hospitals in the UK to begin using this technique and now has one of the biggest neurostimulation unit in Europe. Over 150 patients with epilepsy have now been treated using vagal nerve stimulation – some patients are now seizure free and there have been improvements in over 60% of cases.
The use of spinal cord stimulation to counteract pain has also been successful. It has been used in over 300 patients, 60% with reporting pain relief where all other approaches have failed.
Deep brain stimulation is also being used to counteract movement disorders like Parkinson’s disease and in future there are hopes the technique can even be used to treat psychiatric conditions like obsessive compulsive disorder.
