Anteromedial GPi deep brain stimulation in Tourette syndrome: The first case series from Iran

Tourette syndrome (TS) is a neuropsychiatric disorder characterized by childhood onset motor and phonic tics. In refractory cases, deep brain stimulation (DBS) with different targets including anteromedial Globus pallidus (AM-GPi) looks promising.

Patients with TS diagnosed according to DSM-IV TR criteria with severe medication-recalcitrant disease referred to our DBS clinic, were recruited for this study. They underwent bilateral AM-GPi DBS with Model 3389, Medtronic electrodes. Patients were assessed using Yale Global Tic Severity Scale (YGTSS) and Gilles de la Touretts syndrome-quality of life (GTS-QOL) questionnaire before and one year after DBS.

Six patients (four men and two women) with severe medication-recalcitrant TS, mean age of 26.33 ± 7.25 years fulfilled the follow up visits. All patients revealed significant improvement in tics severity one year after surgery. Based on YGTSS, total tic severity score decreased from 75.66 ± 16.54 to 28.33 ± 13.95, P-value:0.005. Quality of life improved significantly after DBS (26.66 ± 20.65 before and 70.00 ± 17.88 one year after surgery, P-value:0.02).

Results of our study in accordance to previous ones suggest AM-GPi DBS as an effective and well-tolerated therapeutic modality for patients with medication refractory TS.