Surgery and Psychiatry
I'm taking a break right now because one of my computers (yes, I have a few) has just reminded me how infuriating they can be when you want to put in one little piece of new hardware. It never works out the way the ads say and although I always know to expect frustration, I live in hope that it will go smoothly.
This computer, which I call "The Monster," is really quite nice and I have great hopes for it. I once had another which I called "Mrs. Robinson" after the character in "The Graduate." That computer was always trying to seduce people into thinking it could do things it couldn't. Yes, it was a Mrs. Robinson, if ever there was one. Did I ever whisper "plastic" to it? No, but I know it knew about plastic because it had plastic ersatz "walnut" covering its keyboard area.
So, while I allowed myself to calm down from this latest computer glitch, I turned to my news reader and found it had actually caught more good items than I had expected. Pleasant surprise for me and, hopefully, interesting news for you.
One item, which appeared on the website called Red Herring, carried a piece about the latest efforts in psychiatry to use surgery and implantable stimulators to help people with intractable depression. In this instance, it would be anyone who had "failed" at trials of at least four different antidepressant meds. If it helps in depression, perhaps it could be useful for those who have incredible anxiety such as OCD that prevents them from enjoying life. Let's proceed cautiously here.
The company that is making the device, a vagal nerve stimulator, has decided to stop three clinical trials and the psychiatrists on a listserv where I am a member wondered what this meant. I don't know, either.
I do know that this new technology is called neuromodulation and it is estimated to be a multi-billion dollar field. Nerve stimulation devices are or will be used for everything from seizure control, pain management, depression and, possibly, Alzheimer's disease, provided that is, that the research lives up to the expectation of patients and providers. I recall all too well how early 20th Century psychiatrists willingly had their patients' teeth pulled, hysterectomies performed and even extensive nasal surgeries were ordered to cure psychiatric problems.
Some of the research is mixed and, if the stimulators don't exactly do the job, they aren't all that easy to remove. The body, you see, has a way of wrapping protective tissue around things it finds irritating, sort of like oysters that coat bits of sand and, in the process, turns them into pearls.
So, will surgery be the new psychiatry? Maybe for some it will provide the relief they haven't found in anything else, but not for all.
Related Topics: Treatments for Depression, Group Attacks Depression Device
Technorati Tags: VNS, neuromodulation, neurostimulator
This computer, which I call "The Monster," is really quite nice and I have great hopes for it. I once had another which I called "Mrs. Robinson" after the character in "The Graduate." That computer was always trying to seduce people into thinking it could do things it couldn't. Yes, it was a Mrs. Robinson, if ever there was one. Did I ever whisper "plastic" to it? No, but I know it knew about plastic because it had plastic ersatz "walnut" covering its keyboard area.
So, while I allowed myself to calm down from this latest computer glitch, I turned to my news reader and found it had actually caught more good items than I had expected. Pleasant surprise for me and, hopefully, interesting news for you.
One item, which appeared on the website called Red Herring, carried a piece about the latest efforts in psychiatry to use surgery and implantable stimulators to help people with intractable depression. In this instance, it would be anyone who had "failed" at trials of at least four different antidepressant meds. If it helps in depression, perhaps it could be useful for those who have incredible anxiety such as OCD that prevents them from enjoying life. Let's proceed cautiously here.
The company that is making the device, a vagal nerve stimulator, has decided to stop three clinical trials and the psychiatrists on a listserv where I am a member wondered what this meant. I don't know, either.
I do know that this new technology is called neuromodulation and it is estimated to be a multi-billion dollar field. Nerve stimulation devices are or will be used for everything from seizure control, pain management, depression and, possibly, Alzheimer's disease, provided that is, that the research lives up to the expectation of patients and providers. I recall all too well how early 20th Century psychiatrists willingly had their patients' teeth pulled, hysterectomies performed and even extensive nasal surgeries were ordered to cure psychiatric problems.
Some of the research is mixed and, if the stimulators don't exactly do the job, they aren't all that easy to remove. The body, you see, has a way of wrapping protective tissue around things it finds irritating, sort of like oysters that coat bits of sand and, in the process, turns them into pearls.
So, will surgery be the new psychiatry? Maybe for some it will provide the relief they haven't found in anything else, but not for all.
Related Topics: Treatments for Depression, Group Attacks Depression Device
Technorati Tags: VNS, neuromodulation, neurostimulator
0 Comments:
Post a Comment