AUTHOR=Cozac Vitalii V. , Ehrensperger Michael M. , Gschwandtner Ute , Hatz Florian , Meyer Antonia , Monsch Andreas U. , Schuepbach Michael , Taub Ethan , Fuhr Peter 

TITLE=Older Candidates for Subthalamic Deep Brain Stimulation in Parkinson's Disease Have a Higher Incidence of Psychiatric Serious Adverse Events

JOURNAL=Frontiers in Aging Neuroscience

VOLUME=8

YEAR=2016

URL=https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/aging-neuroscience/articles/10.3389/fnagi.2016.00132

DOI=10.3389/fnagi.2016.00132

ISSN=1663-4365

ABSTRACT=<p><bold>Objective:</bold> To investigate the incidence of serious adverse events (SAE) of subthalamic deep brain stimulation (STN-DBS) in elderly patients with Parkinson's disease (PD).</p><p><bold>Methods:</bold> We investigated a group of 26 patients with PD who underwent STN-DBS at mean age 63.2 ± 3.3 years. The operated patients from the EARLYSTIM study (mean age 52.9 ± 6.6) were used as a comparison group. Incidences of SAE were compared between these groups.</p><p><bold>Results:</bold> A higher incidence of psychosis and hallucinations was found in these elderly patients compared to the younger patients in the EARLYSTIM study (<italic>p</italic> &lt; 0.01).</p><p><bold>Conclusions:</bold> The higher incidence of STN-DBS-related psychiatric complications underscores the need for comprehensive psychiatric pre- and postoperative assessment in older DBS candidates. However, these psychiatric SAE were transient, and the benefits of DBS clearly outweighed its adverse effects.</p>