we received this from canadian relatives of PD patient .,among

them an MD, who are related to our dtr.  does it sound right ,

though i am not yet interested.

bernie 65/15
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  WINNIPEG FREE PRESS


'Bionic man' gets new life Rare surgery relieves Parkinson's symptoms


Sun, Sep 24, 2000

IAN Yamron looks like your average aging businessman-- balding, a little
stout maybe, the kind of guy you'd pass on the street without even noticing.

But take another look.

A nearly imperceptible pair of ridges -- the size of insulated copper wires
-- runs beneath his scalp behind his ears, down his neck and right under his
collar bone. Ever since he shaved his head, the ridges have been
clearly visible.

This twin set of wires is attached to two tiny metal bars studded with
electrodes, nestled deep in his brain.

They're his walking wires -- without them he'd be as  stiff as a board, or
rocking and weaving from medication side-effects.

The wires run down to a bionic battery pack surgically implanted under the
skin below the collar bone. The battery pack has a remote-control device
Yamron holds in his hand. When he waves the remote past the implant in his
chest and turns it on, it's like magic for the man.

Not even actor Michael J. Fox, diagnosed with Parkinson's about two years
ago, has one.

The implant is as close as it gets to a cure for the incurable neurological
disease that robs its victims  of their ability to move, step-by-step, until
they are forced into wheelchairs. Many eventually die of falls from the
progressive neurological condition that affects 100,000 Canadians, 3,000 of
which live in Manitoba.

Yamron is the first Parkinson's patient in Winnipeg to have had the surgery
done by local surgeons. There are perhaps two other Parkinson's patients and
maybe four others with different disorders in the entire city
who, like Yamron, are bionic men with deep brain implants.

Diagnosed with the disease in the early '90s, the symptoms were slow to
creep up on Yamron, but in the months before the 60-year-old deli-owner
underwent the18-hour surgical ordeal, the disease began to escalate.

Almost overnight, it seemed, the telltale tremors became pronounced. His
body became rigid -- his walk, a shuffle; his posture, stooped. He lost his
sense of balance. His Parkinson's pills gave him insomnia and made him
writhe and twitch when they worked at all.

He couldn't work. His wife and two daughters took over the business for him.

He and his wife were forced to sell the home they'd had for 28 of their 37
years of marriage. He couldn't handle the stairs.

He could no longer sleep on a bed and he made a nest
of blankets on the floor next to his wife every night.

He couldn't even tie his own shoelaces.

Until the surgery.

PHOTO

Sun, Sep 24, 2000

By Alexandra Paul

THE future of implant surgery that gave Parkinson's patient Ian Yamron his
life back is now uncertain in Winnipeg.

Dr. Rob Brownstone, the surgeon who performed the deep-brain stimulation
surgery, has moved to Halifax, and exacting new international standards for
the operation may mean larger centres than Manitoba will be taking over the
surgery -- at least for now.

The Winnipeg Regional Health Authority is building up the province's drained
neurosciences program and the future is wide open for potential growth,
doctors said.

Recruited

Neurosurgeons Dr. Tony Kaufmann and Dr. Michael West were recruited this
summer. Neither does the kind of implant surgery that Yamron received, but
West has an interest in surgeries like it that rely on MRI images and
special
frames called stereotaxic halos that make implant surgery possible.

West, raised in Winnipeg, returned in September from the Cleveland Clinic,
world renowned for its doctors. His expertise in neurovascular surgery for
stroke victims is to be put to use in the OR.

Another specialist is to be recruited to work with new equipment that does
non-surgerical angioplasty inside the brain, treating trauma and emergencies
like aneurysms (blood bubbles) now treated with standard surgery. The new
procedures call for a multi-million dollar investment at Health Sciences
Centre that also includes more clinic and office space, 10 new beds, and a
step-down unit for patients, said Winnipeg Regional Health Authoritychief
medical officer Dr. Brock Wright.

Kaufmann is here part-time until the new year when he
moves permanently from Calgary. Part of his duties
include
building up a team for a new centre in cranial nerve
disorders.

Specialists currently in the city, as well as doctors to be recruited in
neurosurgery and orthopedic surgery, are to form another centre, this time
for complex spinal surgery. New radiation oncology equipment, to be on
line early in the next year, will allow doctors to treat some of those
related brain injuries and diseases without surgery.

The new recruits replenish the number of surgeons to the province's quota of
seven. For some months, a shortage dropped the ranks to five neurosurgeons,
compelling doctors who stayed here to double up on work, said Dr. Luis
Oppenheimer, head of surgery for the Winnipeg Regional Health Authority.

Oppenheimer praised Brownstone, who performed Yamron's surgery and did
implant surgery on two other non-Parkinson's patients this summer, saying he
hopes he returns here.

Pioneer

Outside the OR, Brownstone remains a rising star on the roster at the
University of Manitoba's Spinal Cord Research Centre, where his work made
him
a pioneer in the new frontier of transgenic mice and movement disorders such
as Lou Gehrig's disease. The extra OR work was what did him in here, a close
colleague said.

"In order to maintain his research career he felt he had to leave. In
Winnipeg he couldn't get enough time to do his research. There weren't
enough
neurosurgeons (for) the OR," said the centre's founder Dr. Larry Jordan.

Some day, Brownstone wants to come back home to
Winnipeg, several doctors said.

PHOTO PHIL HOSSACK/WINNIPEG FREE PRESS



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