Tremor suppression following treatment with MRgFUS: skull density ratio consistency and degree of posterior dentatorubrothalamic tract lesioning predicts long-term clinical outcomes in essential tremor.

Magnetic resonance-guided focussed ultrasound (MRgFUS) is an incisionless ablative procedure, widely used for treatment of Parkinsonian and Essential Tremor (ET). Enhanced understanding of the patient- and treatment-specific factors that influence sustained long-term tremor suppression could help clinicians achieve superior outcomes We retrospectively analysed data from 31 subjects with ET, treated with MRgFUS at a single centre. Tremor severity was assessed with parts A, B and C of the Clinical Rating Scale for Tremor (CRST) as well as the combined CRST. Tremor in the dominant and non-dominant hand was assessed with Hand Tremor Scores (HTS), derived from the CRST. Pre- and post-treatment imaging data were analysed to determine ablation volume overlap with automated thalamic segmentations, and the dentatorubrothalamic tract (DRTT) and compared with percentage change in CRST and HTS following treatment. Tremor symptoms were significantly reduced following treatment. Combined pre-treatment CRST (mean: 60.7 ± 17.3) and HTS (mean: 19.2 ± 5.7) improved by an average of 45.5 and 62.6%, respectively. Percentage change in CRST was found to be significantly negatively associated with age (β = -0.375, Our results suggest that increased lesioning of the posterior region of the DRTT could result in greater improvements in combined CRST and non-dominant hand HTS, and that subjects with lower SDR standard deviation tended to experience greater improvement in combined CRST.

Informations de copyright

Copyright © 2023 Kyle, Maller, Barnett, Jonker, Barnett, D’Souza, Calamante, Maamary, Peters, Wang and Tisch.

Déclaration de conflit d'intérêts

KK declares that he was the recipient of funding in the form of a PhD scholarship from GE Healthcare Australia. MB reports research support from Biogen, Novartis, Sanofi-Genzyme, Merck, Alexion and Bristol Myers Squibb and advisory board consulting fees from Novartis and Autobahn Therapeutics. MB is the Director of Research (Honorary), Sydney Neuroimaging Analysis Centre, and ad-hoc consultant, RxMx. The remaining authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.