ABSTRACT
Deep brain stimulation (DBS) is a fairly recent surgical therapy for the treatment
of Parkinson’s disease (PD), having first won Food and Drug Administration
(FDA) approval in 1997 [for use in the thalamus; approval for use in the subthala-
mic nucleus (STN) came in 2001]. As a surgical procedure involving the brain,
DBS requires the ethical oversight that is applied to any surgery and the
additional scrutiny due to a novel procedure that affects brain function.
In addition, DBS is used most often on patients who are elderly, in whom
other treatments have failed or ceased to be effective, who may be cognitively
or affectively impaired, and who may have comorbidities.
