“Somebody just waved a magic wand over my head”

The Queen Square Imaging Centre in London has achieved remarkable success in treating patients with essential tremor and tremor dominant Parkinson’s disease using MR-guided focused ultrasound. The innovative approach has proven to be exceptionally effective, surpassing even the most hopeful initial expectations. Potentially the treatment possibilities inherent in the method extend well beyond tremor, suggesting we are merely at the inception of its potential.

Mary Hapgood from London had suffered from essential tremor since she was in her twenties, however as she grew older her symptoms began to significantly disrupt her life in numerous ways.

“In the last ten years, it just got worse and worse. I found it difficult to eat, I couldn’t use cutlery, it got to a stage where I couldn’t even eat with my fingers. It affected my life socially, I stopped going out, I stopped seeing family and friends and stopped inviting people to my home as well.”

Magnetic resonance-guided focused ultrasound – abbreviated as MRgFUS – is an incisionless procedure that combines two key technologies: a magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scanner and a high intensity focused ultrasound scanner. At Queen Square Imaging a Signa Premier XT 3.0T MRI scanner from GE HealthCare which features 80mT/m / 200T/m/s SuperG gradients is used in conjunction with the Exablate Neuro Platform from Insightec.

James Blann, from Insightec explains how it works: “MRgFUS directs high intensity focused ultrasound beams safely through the patient’s scalp and skull to target one or two small areas of brain tissue, which are responsible for the tremor. The spot where the ultrasound waves are focused heats up creating a tiny lesion in the targeted area of the brain. The MRI enables the medical team to identify and target the specific areas with 1mm precision.”

Jodee Cooper, CEO of Queen Square Imaging Centre says: “I believe that in my over 25 years of healthcare experience, MRgFUS stands out as the most revolutionary treatment I’ve encountered.”

Throughout the procedure, which typically lasts 2 to 2.5 hours the patient remains fully conscious. Many experience an immediate reduction in their tremor as they emerge from the MRI scanner – something that Mary Hapgood fully agrees to: “You go in, you have the procedure, there is very little pain, there is very little discomfort, you go out again, and it’s done. It just feels like a miracle. It was as if somebody just waved a magic wand over my head. At the age of 72 I feel I have my life back, and I will encourage anybody who has moderate to severe essential tremor to go for this because this is life changing.”

Picture: Mary Hapgood

This news story has been sponsored by the companies concerned and does not represent the views or opinions of RAD Magazine.