Acute symptomatic peri-lead edema 33 hours after deep brain stimulation surgery: a case report

BACKGROUND Symptomatic peri-lead edema is a rare complication of deep brain stimulation that has been reported to develop 4 to 120 days postoperatively. CASE PRESENTATION Here we report the case of a 63-year-old Hispanic man with an 8-year history of Parkinson's disease who underwent bilateral placement of subthalamic nucleus deep brain stimulation leads and presented with acute, symptomatic, unilateral, peri-lead edema just 33 hours after surgery. CONCLUSIONS We document a thorough radiographic time course showing the evolution of these peri-lead changes and their regression with steroid therapy, and discuss the therapeutic implications of these findings. We propose that the unilateral peri-lead edema after bilateral deep brain stimulation is the result of severe microtrauma with blood-brain barrier disruption. Knowledge of such early manifestation of peri-lead edema after deep brain stimulation is critical for ruling out stroke and infection and preventing unnecessary diagnostic testing or hardware removal in this rare patient population.