Brain Stimulation Summary

Weaver et al. (2012) examined the long-term outcomes of deep brain stimulation (DBS) of the globus pallidus interna (GPi) and subthalamic nucleus (STN) for patients with Parkinson disease who do not receive adequate relief from their symptoms with traditional Parkinson’s medications (Appendix E). Relevant findings established in this article included: hypothesis, study design, sample size, methods of data collection/analysis, and the findings of the study.
Although a hypothesis did not stand directly stated in the article, a possible hypothesis could state: “When advanced Parkinson’s patients are treated with deep brain stimulation (DBS), the long-term outcomes will result in an adequate relief of Parkinson’s symptoms.” The independent variables of this study stood as GPi (globus pallidus interna) and STN (subthalamic nucleus) DBS. The dependent variable of the study was the level of motor symptom relief that the patient experienced. Using a randomized controlled trial, the trial studied 159 patients who were not well-managed with medication alone (Weaver et al., 2012).
The authors controlled a great deal of the main extraneous variables through their selection of patients – all patients came from 7 Veterans Affairs (VA) and 6 affiliated university medical centers – who were randomly stratified by study site and patient age (Weaver et al., 2012). The tools utilized for data collection remained appropriate, caused no harm to the participants, and lead to both subjective and objective data. Prior to randomization, the study was approved by institutional review boards and participants provided written informed consent (Weaver et al.,