Chicago area man with movement disorder among first to be treated with new procedure
When NFL legend Brett Favre recently announced his Parkinson's diagnosis, he raised awareness for the degenerative disease, which has no cure and no known cause.
But researchers are making strides in therapy for Parkinson's and essential tremor, an even more common movement disorder that affects as many as 10 million people in the U.S. CBS News Chicago spoke to a patient at Northwestern Medicine who became the first to try one of their new procedures.
"Miracle" is a word Chuck Wicks has used a lot recently, less than two months after a procedure that stopped the tremors in his right hand.
"It's gone," Wicks, an essential tremor patient. "It's an absolute miracle."
Wicks has had the condition essential tremor disorder all his adult life, but a video taken just two hours after undergoing a "focused ultrasound" procedure stopped the shaking in his right hand.
"It is a miracle," Wicks said in that video.
He said he recently decided to look into possible therapies.
"I just decided to bite the bullet," Wicks said. "What have I got to lose?"
He found the procedure would be covered by his Medicare plan.
"How they ever determined where this spot was in the brain is amazing," Wicks said. "The whole technology, I wish it had been around. I could have done it 25 years ago."
Dr. Joshua Rosenow is on the team that did the non-invasive procedure, which uses soundwaves to target the part of Wicks' brain that caused the tremors, a procedure that's been around for years, but Northwestern Medicine is one of the few systems in the country that offers it.
Rosenow said some patients have been reluctant to sign on for other tremor treatments, including a deep brain surgery to implant an electrode.
"You think about how far, think about Parkinson's research has come since Michael J. Fox went public back in the 1990s," Rosenow said. "There has been a sea change and how we look at Parkinson's. Now essential tremor, the problem that Mr. Wicks has, is actually a more common movement disorder than Parkinson's is, but it's much more under-treated both medically and surgery than Parkinson's."
Wicks said the procedures changed the way he does the small things in life, like playing pool and writing.
"Now that it's been done, it's almost like it has always been this way," he said. "It's amazing."
Wicks said the procedure went so well that he is considering having it on his other hand, although the U.S. Food and Drug Administration does require patient wait at least nine months between the two procedures.
