Deep brain stimulation and histopathological changes

Deep brain stimulation (DBS) with electrodes stereotactically implanted in the thalamus and basal ganglia rapidly gained acceptance for the treatment of a variety of movement disorders. Although more than 30,000 people have received DBS treatment worldwide, surprisingly little is known about tissue changes following long-term DBS. Therefore, postmortem analyses including histopathological studies were performed on 8 subjects (7 with Parkinson's disease and 1 with essential tremor) with a total of 14 DBS electrodes (2 in the globus pallidus, 4 in the thalamus, 8 in the subthalamic nucleus) up to 8 years after sur…