Letter re: Long-term improvement in obsessions and compulsions with subthalamic stimulation

The clinical note by Polosan et al.1 described a patient with severe obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) with sustained improvement 10 years after deep brain stimulation (DBS) of the subthalamic nucleus (STN). The authors wrote, "Little is known about long-term outcome of STN-DBS in OCD," and they concluded, "Future studies will have to confirm the long-term efficacy of STN-DBS in OCD illustrated in this single case report."1 These are remarkable statements coming from the authors of the pioneering French multicenter study on STN-DBS for OCD published in 2008.2 In that study, 17 patients participated in a double-blind trial of STN-DBS with evaluation at 3 months. There has been no follow-up of that study, except a couple reports of a few selected patients from the Grenoble group.3,4 If "little is known about long-term outcome of STN-DBS in OCD," there is an easy way to remediate that lack of knowledge: evaluate and publish the >3-month results of the patients from the French multicenter study (which also included the patient described in the present report). Frankly, there is no need to wait for future studies that "will have to confirm the long-term efficacy of STN-DBS in OCD."
Source: Neurology - Category: Neurology Authors: Tags: WRITECLICK & amp;reg; EDITOR ' S CHOICE Source Type: research