New treatment makes life easier for Parkinson patients

Meg Farris / Eyewitness News

mfarris@wwltv.com
NEW ORLEANS – The tremors caused by Parkinson's Disease can be life changing. But in a recent study, doctors found that deep-brain stimulation works better than the best medicine at improving quality of life.

A local man told Eyewitness News how the treatment is working for him, and a local doctor talked all about the breakthrough treatments that are on the horizon.

Gene Falgoust's family and co-workers at the refinery noticed at times his finger or leg would shake. Then years ago, when he was 47 years old, came the medical diagnosis.

"Well I said it can't be happening to me, but in the long run, I just accepted it," he said.

For a while, the part of his brain that was dying from Parkinson's Disease was helped with medication, but then he needed something more.

So what happened when he had deep brain stimulation?

"I stopped shaking. I wasn't shaking as much. I still shake now and then but not as much as I used too," said Gene.

Ochsner Neurologist and Parkinson's specialist Dr. J. Rao brought Falgoust into surgery. And while Falgoust was completely awake, the doctor opened up his skull to expose a part of his brain. Then they found the area that was causing the shaking problems and implanted a wire into it.

"When we are in the operating room, we check it with the hand-held battery operated gizmo and make sure it stops. We don't get out of the operating room until we are absolutely sure we found the spot (in the brain) that will make it stop," Rao said.

The wire is connected to a device about the size of a pacemaker and is programmed to give Falgoust the exact stimulation that he needs.

You can see the impression of the wire running up Gene's neck, and the stimulators in his body. He had one side done the old way using a painful halo to keep his head still during surgery, but just recently he had the other side of the brain done in a newer, more comfortable way, with a tower-like device.

"The procedure was different the first time I had it done. I had to wear a halo and it was piercing my skull. It was really painful, but this time nothing, and you have to be awake for the surgery and I could hear the doctors talking," Gene explains.

And Dr. Rao can turn the device on and off from the outside of Gene's body. You can see what happens when Gene's deep brain stimulator is off: he shakes continuously. When it is on, his hands are still.

"I'd always be embarrassed when I'd go out in public. You know everybody in Vacherie, it's a little town, but everybody in Vacherie prayed for me.”

But now his life has changed.

"I can write my name, I can do almost anything I want to now, he says.

Even dress himself.

"Yeah, well my wife had to help me at times. Now I do it all on my own," he adds.

The makers of the stimulator say not everyone is a candidate for it, but for people who are, you can instantly see the difference it makes in their lives. And while this is not brand new technology, Rao said in the next 10 years this will lead to major new changes.

"This is an enormously exciting time to be doing that," Rao said.

A nanochip alone will be implanted in the brain to fix the symptoms. It's already been done in animals. A gene will be introduced into the body to make the dopamine that the dying part of the brain can no longer make.

Growth factors, a protein that allows the dying cells to survive, could be available.

And your own stem cells could be made to go repair the damaged ones in the brain.

Rao says with the aging baby boomers, this technology could not come at a better time.

"The incidence in Parkinson's Disease is going to increase by 40-70 percent in Louisiana in the next 10 years," Dr. Rao cautions.

So for people such as Gene, the hope is as his disease gets worse, scientists will give him the opportunity to live even better.

One and a half million American's have Parkinson's, with 60,000 new cases diagnosed each year.