Modern Neurosurgery for Psychiatric Disorders

TOPIC REVIEW Modern Neurosurgery for Psychiatric Disorders

OBJECTIVE: The evolution, rationale, and results of modern functional neurosurgery to treat psychiatric disorders are documented. The potential benefits of neurosurgical treatment for selected, critically ill, psychiatric patients are considered. METHODS: The history, anatomic features, and evolution of and contemporary indications for the four currently used procedures (cingulotomy, subcaudate...

Editorial Neurosurgery for psychiatric disorders

Daring must be an inborn trait. Egas Moniz, the neurolo-gist who extrapolated from the abolition of experimental neurosis in two chimpanzees to the invention of a procedure to ablate pathways of the frontal lobes in mentally ill human beings, had already developed angiog-raphy and spent time in jail for opposition to the Portugese monarchy 1. Such a man could write, in recording the results in ...

Editorial Neurosurgery for psychiatric disorders

Consensus on guidelines for stereotactic neurosurgery for psychiatric disorders

BACKGROUND For patients with psychiatric illnesses remaining refractory to 'standard' therapies, neurosurgical procedures may be considered. Guidelines for safe and ethical conduct of such procedures have previously and independently been proposed by various local and regional expert groups. METHODS To expand on these earlier documents, representative members of continental and international ...

Modern neurosurgery for mental disorder

The authors review contemporary indications for neurosurgical interventions in the management of chronic and refractory mental disorder, the procedures involved, their efficacy and known adverse effects. These data are presented within the context of a brief historical overview of the use of neurosurgery for mental disorder. In addition to a consideration of neurosurgical procedures that rely o...