Network analysis in Gamma Knife capsulotomy for intractable obsessive-compulsive disorder

Gamma-knife Ventral Capsulotomy (GVC) has been suggested as an efficacious treatment for a subset of patients with treatment refractory obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD).

The goal of this study was to investigate neural correlates of GVC and investigate the predictive value of white matter tracts that are known to be associated with clinical outcome to Deep Brain Stimulation (DBS).

MR images of 8 treatment-refractory OCD patients with a minimum follow-up of 3-years who underwent GVC were used to correlate lesion characteristics with symptom improvement. This exploratory study investigated relations between differences in cortical grey matter structure and subcortical structures before and after GVC for responding and non-responding patients (n ​= ​6). Normative diffusion MRI- based tractography was used to determine networks associated with successful lesions.

The mean total Y-BOCS reduction was 19.6 after three years, resulting in a response rate of 63%.The strongest correlation with symptom improvement was found for a decrease of the left ventral diencephalon volume (r ​= ​-0.83, p ​= ​0.039). Discriminative tractography suggest streamlines connecting the prefrontal cortex with the subthalamic nucleus to be associated with clinical response. However, results could not be validated either implicating interpatient anatomical variability or reflecting the relative small sample size as a limitation.

Taken together, the present study highlights the efficacy of GVC in patients with treatment-refractory OCD. Our results are suggestive of GVC treatment efficacy being mediated by the involvement of a subpart of the ALIC connecting the PFC and the STN.