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i've actually read most of the papers bob posted the abstracts from. some comments. over laitinen's mean 2 year followup period he reports only 3 of 38 patients had a recurence and they had smaller lesions than the others. in a letter in j. neurosurgery 77, p.488 laitinen mentions that he's now done the procedure on 125 patients and complications have diminished in frequency as they've done more operations. About the site of the lesion. laitinen says that in the early 50's pallidotomy began with lesions in the antero-dorsal pallidum. In 1954 leksell began operating and soon moved to the posteroventral pallidum. also in 1954 hassler and reichert began thalamotomys, because of this procedures dramatic effect on tremor. soon neurosurgeons switched from pallidotomy to thalamotomy. it wasn't till 1985 that anyone tried postero-ventral pallidotomy again.(according to laitinen) so the only time pallidotomy was done the way it is now, was by leksell in the mid 50's. ( or so laitinen implies) the present site is 2 mm in front of the mid-commisural point, 6 mm below the inter-commisural line, and 21 mm from the midline of the 3rd ventricle. this has changed even from leksells site, and is surely different from an antero-dorsal pallidotomy and a thalamotomy. there are also 2 letters in the lancet,vol 343, feb 12 and april 30, 1994 from dr. iacono at loma linda. he reports on 105 patients. needless to say, he reports excellent results. with a mean followup of 9.2 months he reports regression in only 6 patients. using the unified parkinsons disease rating scale (UPDRS) he reports an mean pre-op total score of 56.49 and a mean post-op score of 24.12 --- Seth L. Ness Ness Gadol Hayah Sham [log in to unmask]