Treatment guidelines of the Movement Disorder Society for deep brain stimulation for Parkinson's Disease

Deep brain stimulation has been established as an efficacious therapeutic approach for patients suffering from long-term complications of Parkinson's disease and its therapy. Meanwhile, there is much experience with that new treatment and the frequency of procedures has substantially increased. However, there is no common treatment guideline available which summarizes the current knowledge based on a systematic review of the literature. This project was commissioned by the Movement Disorder Society and the Congress of Neurological Surgeons. A search of the literature in Medline was completed until May 1^st 2004 and gave a total of 450 articles related to deep brain stimulation. Each article was classified according to the definitions for the classification of evidence of the American Academy of Neurology. Clinically relevant questions of the preoperative evaluation, the surgical procedure, and the postoperative management have been answered as precise as possible on the basis of the above mentioned articles. Since many of the recommendations cannot be given on a class 1 or 2 evidence level, the editorial committee had to discuss and eventually reformulate each recommendation during a three day-day meeting.

We summarize and discuss the relevant topics of the guidelines as proposed by the ad-hoc committee.