Surgery for Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder and Transient Tremors as Newly Reported Side Effect: First Psychiatric...

The use of surgery for treatment of psychiatric conditions is a well-established strategy, especially in severe and resistant obsessive-compulsive disorder. Attractive anatomical and functional targets for stereotactic surgery are reported in some studies. Surgery for treatment of psychiatric conditions in our nation and Arab world is obscured and hidden because of several social and cultural limitations, which should be overcome. We report here the first psychiatric neurosurgery in our nation and how we overcome such community limitation. This the first report of postoperative tremor.

Young patient presented with severe and persistent obsessive-compulsive disorder resistant to all non-surgical modalities for several years. Stereotactic ablation surgery was done under local anaesthesia. Marked improvement in our obsessive-compulsive disorder patient after psychiatric neurosurgery with self-limited tremor was not reported before in the literature. The medications were the same before and immediate after surgery and this is not a drug-induced tremor. Postoperative YBOCS showed 90% of improvement.

Surgery-induced tremor could be a self-limited side effect after surgery in obsessive-compulsive disorder. Safety and efficacy should be promoted in our nation and Arab world. Society and cultural limitations should be overcome by further research studies, intervention, and activism in the field of mental health systems in our nation and Arab countries to improve awareness.