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April 18th, 2012 
FAKE NEWS for the Zionist agenda TUESDAY, April 17 (HealthDay News) — Most people with
obsessive-compulsive disorder manage their symptoms through talk therapy
and medication. But for some, severe OCD can take over their lives. A few
eventually turn to brain surgery, and a new study shows how they
fared.
The study included 63 adult patients who underwent “stereotactic
anterior cingulotomy” at Massachusetts General Hospital from 1989 to 2010,
with long-term data available for 59 of the cases.
“Half these patients had a very significant improvement in their
symptoms — more than 35 percent improvement in the OCD scale that we
use,” said Dr. Sameer Sheth, chief resident in the department of
neurosurgery at the hospital.
“These are patients who are completely refractory (unresponsive) to
medical or behavioral therapy and have gone for years, if not decades,
completely incapacitated,” he added.
Patients who responded “are often still taking their medications and
they’re still undergoing behavioral therapy, but it’s actually making a
difference,” Sheth said. “They’re able to stop the hand washing, stop the
checking, stop the hoarding, all these symptoms they had before, and carry
on with their lives.”
He was scheduled to present the research Tuesday at the American
Association of Neurological Surgeons’ annual meeting, in Miami.
People with obsessive-compulsive disorder have recurrent, upsetting
thoughts that lead them to perform repetitive behaviors or rituals to try
and relieve their anxiety. According to the U.S. National Institute of
Mental Health, one in 100 adults in the United States has
obsessive-compulsive disorder, and half are severe cases.
Obsessive-compulsive disorder symptoms in severe cases “can take over
the entire day,” said Kiara Timpano, an assistant professor in the
department of psychology at the University of Miami who works with
patients with OCD.
“With a hand-washing or showering obsession, a person could take up to
six hours a day, doing their washing ritual. That’s just torture,”
Timpano added.
Frontline psychological treatment for obsessive-compulsive disorder is
called exposure therapy. Medications include selective serotonin reuptake
inhibitors (SSRIs). Estimates vary, but for a quarter or more of patients,
these therapies don’t work.
Neurosurgical options include gamma-knife surgery and deep brain
stimulation, as well as cingulotomy. But potential candidates for these
options must undergo a rigorous screening, Sheth said.
Both experts emphasized that the surgical candidates in the study had
failed rounds of single- and multiple-drug therapies as well as behavioral
therapies and were vetted by a multidisciplinary committee.
Most patients who do undergo a cingulotomy don’t experience any
complications, Sheth said. In his study, he reported, three developed
abulia — a difficulty in interacting and unresponsiveness — lasting a
few days; one patient developed seizures that required medication, and
another had an infection.
In addition, he said, two patients committed suicide at some point
after undergoing the procedure. One occurred a few weeks after the
surgery, and the other about a year later. He noted that along with
obsessive-compulsiveness, patients are monitored for depression.
“These patients with this severe OCD often have [co-existing]
depression, major depression,” he said. “So in a group of moderately to
severely depressed patients over a 20-year time span, two out of the 63 is
probably a similar fraction to what you’d expect.”
The research is ongoing, Sheth added, with the team keeping track of
these patients — who come from all over the world — indefinitely.
And Timpano noted, “I think it’s important that they’ve demonstrated
this follow-up on a fairly large group of patients. It really lets us see
how people who’ve received the cingulotomy do in the long run.”
Sheth’s team reported on results to date in the American Journal of
Psychiatry in 2002, and the current results are under review for
journal publication. Findings presented at medical meetings are typically
considered preliminary until published in a peer-reviewed journal.
More information
The International OCD Foundation has more about obsessive-compulsive disorder.
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