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Deep Brain Stimulation Surgery is done for patients with Parkinson's Disease who has severe symptoms.  Virtual DBS can be performed here.  Awesome website -- I get to put fiducials, hold scalpels and drill holes into skulls (virtually, of course).  There's emphasis on asepsis, which is a mainstay of surgical procedures.  I hope there's more virtual surgery websites out there. It's a fun way to actively learn stuff.  :)

What I learned:

• PD patients who has severe symptoms need to take medications every 2 hours.  Those with severe symptoms, which can no longer be controlled by medications, can undergo deep brain stimulation surgery.
• People undergoing DBS are on local anesthesia only.  It's fascinating, yet horrifying, that brains can be operated on with just the minimum amount of anesthesia.  Children, for obvious reasons, undergo DBS while under general anesthesia.
• Nurses are the one who perform the neurological tests after the procedure, with the supervision of the attending surgeon.
• Nurse practitioners can set the voltage on the probes.
• Previous surgical treatment involved ablating and burning the subthalamic nucleus but they found out via research that stimulating the said cells were better.

The internet is made of win! Thank heavens for Youtube, I found the physical assessment videos shown to us last week. I barely watched it because I arrived late and have already seen it. Now, with the prospect of no actual demo before the lab practicals, I really need to watch this stuff.


( Physicality )