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Dear Parkinson's Listpeople: I read with great relief and gratitude Barbara's recent post regarding her pallidotomy, dating its occurance (2 years ago), noting the then-in-force risk factors, and detailing the benefits and remaining symptoms. Unlike most of you perhaps, I was extremely disappointed in the Prime Time Live "demo" of a pallidotomy for precisely the same reasons that the Loma Linda clinic has drawn fire before: wherease such publicity serves a very important function--to make public the availability of a surgical procedure--it fails us (both PDs and their families) miserably on other accounts. Here are some of the missing pieces: 1. How was the patient screened and evaluated? For what sorts of PDs is such surgery NOT indicated? Why? 2. Would the surgical team have chosen to operate on a person, say, with rigidity rather than hyperkinesia? It's easy for us lay people to be amazed at the cessation of movement, but how would the restoration of movement be detected on the operating table. Would a few leg lifts do? 3. Is the only monitoring of motor skills done during the operation a simple "look" at to patient? Are there no medical devices that can measure with more detail precisely what takes place, the degree of restored normality, and so forth? 4. What would have been done had the patient's speech begun to deteriorate? Would removal of the probe reverse the impaired speech? 5. What exactly are the success rates and the failure rates, both by clinic and overall?. More important, how is success defined? A week's improvement? A year's? 6. What is the range of negative and positive effects. If I encourage my father, for example, to undergo this surgery, I would like for all of us (he and his family) to be prepared for the worst and well as for the best news. 7. Do the several (how many?) neurosurgeons performing pallidotomies across the nation communicate with each other? Are they in healthy dialogue? What are the differences in surgical technique that they note among themselves? Are they learning from each other? Would this operation look the same in NY as in S. California? We all are acquainted with the strengths and weaknesses of photojournalism and so although I am delighted too have seen an actual surgery , I feel angry about the poor job of the reporting. We on this list need to discuss openly what was not shown as well as what was. So thank you very much Barbara for the detailed information. Can you tell us more? How did you hear of the pallidotomy? What did it cost? Where was it performed? What other risk factors do you know of? Did you have to wait long? What was your procedure for evaluating your surgeon? What is a blind spot? Susan Romano [log in to unmask]