Catalan hospital's ultrasound treatment reduces tremors by up to 90%
Can Ruti in Badalona has used pioneering technique on 220 patients with Parkinson's and essential tremor in two years
An ultrasound treatment introduced two years ago at Germans Trias i Pujol Hospital in Badalona has made it possible to improve tremors by between 70% and 90% in patients with diseases such as essential tremor and Parkinson's disease.
The hospital, situated just north of Barcelona and popularly known as Can Ruti, was the first public hospital in Catalonia to incoroporate the pioneering technique.
In the past two years it has employed the treatment with more than 220 patients, avoiding the need for "aggressive" surgery, which involved implanting intracerebral electrodes.
From now on, it will be possible to treat a "much larger" number of patients because the technique carries fewer contraindications, according to the head of the movement disorders unit of Can Ruti's neurosciences department, Ramiro Álvarez.
While before they did not operate on people over 80 years old, now Álvarez has treated 89-year-old patients with ultrasound, he added.