DBS has been approved by the Food and Drug Administration as a treatment for essential and Parkinsonian tremor and since 1997,[3] and for Parkinson's disease (PD) since 2002. DBS was approved as humanitarian device exemptions for dystonia in 2003,[4] obsessive–compulsive disorder (OCD) in 2009, and approved for epilepsy in 2018.[5][6][7] DBS has been studied in clinical trials as a potential treatment for chronic pain, for various affective disorders, including major depression, for Alzheimer's Disease and drug addiction, among other brain disorders. It is one of few neurosurgical procedures that allow blinded studies.[1]
As a first approximation, DBS is thought to mimic the clinical effects of lesioning,[8] likely by attenuating (pathologically elevated) information flow through affected brain networks.[9] Thus, DBS is thought to create an 'informational lesion',[10] which can be switched off by turning off the DBS device, i.e. is largely reversible. This is a strong advantage compared to permanent brain lesions that are also applied to similar targets in similar conditions in the field of ablative stereotactic surgery.
^ abKringelbach ML, Jenkinson N, Owen SL, Aziz TZ (August 2007). "Translational principles of deep brain stimulation". Nature Reviews. Neuroscience. 8 (8): 623–635. doi:10.1038/nrn2196. PMID17637800. S2CID147427108.