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New virtual treatment offered to patients with Parkinson's disease

A new virtual treatment at Swedish Medical Center could help more people dealing with the disease, without them even having to leave their home.

ENGLEWOOD, Colo. — Doctors say Parkinson's disease affects one percent of people over the age of 65, with about one million patients in the United States.

One of those patients is Scott Usman. The news of his diagnosis came as a shock.

“I was first diagnosed in 2015, but I had symptoms about two years prior to that,” said Useman. “I was devastated not only because of the disease itself but it was very obvious to me that I was not going to be able to carry on with my career as a flight nurse.”

Useman spent years dealing with the symptoms and being prescribed numerous medications that he was not thrilled to take but needed to function.

“Anywhere from 35 to 50 pills a day and it was difficult to manage and not to mention very expensive,” said Useman.

He connected with Dr. Matthew Mian, Director of Functional Neurosurgery at Swedish Medical Center. Dr. Mian determined Usman to be an ideal candidate for deep Brain Stimulator Surgery (DBS).

“Putting a tiny wire into a deep part of the brain and it delivers painless pulses of electricity that act like a pacemaker and pretty rapidly improve things like tremors,” said Dr. Mian.

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“I was able to do things immediately that I could not do before,” Useman said. “Walk my dogs, spend time reading, driving – it was almost an instant effect”.

Credit: Scott Usman

The procedure has been performed in the United States for over two decades. Recently, doctors have added a virtual component using a smart tablet or phone.

“This allows us to monitor patients from the comfort from their home and we can program them over video and tweak their settings,” said Dr. Mian.

There is still no cure for Parkinson’s Disease, what the procedure does is bring back some of what patients have lost.

“They feel like their Parkinson’s disease has been set back 3 to 5 years,” Dr. Mian said. 

The results are a game changer for the medical world and a celebration for patients like Useman.

“It’s been nothing short of miraculous because I thought all those things were gone and now, I’ve come to realize there is hope,” he said.

Usman says he is regaining his physical and mental strength

Dr. Mian says DBS can be life changing but the biggest challenge is only a small number of eligible patients actually know about the procedure, so they are trying to get the word out.

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