Should I have a unilateral or bilateral brain pacemaker?

  Most Parkinson’s patients start early with a unilateral limb, such as tremor or stiffness in one limb. However, as the disease progresses, they end up with basically bilateral involvement, even if one side has significant symptoms and the other side has mild symptoms. Currently, most of the patients who choose surgery have a long disease duration and the effect of medication decreases. In such patients, the disease history is usually more than 5 years and the symptoms are basically bilateral, so most patients choose bilateral treatment. For patients with a history of more than 5 years, even if the side with mild symptoms does not affect the patient’s daily life much, doctors recommend bilateral brain pacemaker treatment because the symptoms are progressive, that is, the symptoms of Parkinson’s disease will gradually worsen and the disease will continue to develop, and eventually, both sides will be involved. In our clinical work, we often encounter patients who undergo unilateral surgery in the early stage, and then come back for the other side 3-5 years later because of the progression of symptoms.  In terms of cost, currently, all rechargeable brain pacemakers are of one tow two structure, that is to say, one battery with two electrodes, most of the cost is on the battery, and doing bilateral deep brain electrical stimulation does not increase the cost significantly. On the contrary, doing one side and then the other side a few years later will not only increase the number of operations, the patient suffers twice, the cost will also increase significantly, and there will be some changes in the way the operation is performed.  In terms of program control, some foreign scholars have reported that 1+1 is greater than 2 results, which means that bilateral simultaneous stimulation is greater than unilateral stimulation. Bilateral stimulation is also effective for the non-motor symptoms of Parkinson’s disease.  For other diseases, such as idiopathic tremor, which is limited to one upper extremity, unilateral surgery can be considered. For generalized dystonia, tics, depression, and obsessive-compulsive disorder, bilateral brain pacemaker surgery is recommended.