Blog: UK Deep Brain Stimulation Network Meeting January 2019

The UK Deep Brain Stimulation Network's biannual meeting was an opportunity to share ideas, realise action plans at a national level and look strategically at facilitating research and building UK collaborations.

Mike Samuel, Monty Silverdale, Dipankar Nandi, James Fitzgerald, Raj Sarangmat and Tom Foltynie summarise the event. 

This year, Oxford hosted the first 2019 National UK DBS Network meeting, on 17 January. The turnout was excellent with very good representation from our UK DBS centres. We were very pleased to see the number of participants growing for new DBS consultant neurologists, neurosurgeons and DBS specialist nurses.

Special thanks to Dr Nagaraja (Raj) Sarangmat for his help in organising the meeting and the UK Parkinson's Excellence Network for continued support.

Discussions centred around best practice and new techniques, clinical training opportunities and research.

On the topic of clinical practice, post-operative MRI scans in patients with DBS systems continue to raise questions, with variation in clinical practice across the centres. New experience on DBS targeting using complex MRI techniques for tremor was also presented.

For workforce planning, movement disorders clinical training and participation in research was extensively discussed, with suggestions for further plans to train DBS clinicians. 

Finally, meeting attendees discussed research questions, including further studies about timing of DBS surgery. Other issues covered included a national clinical DBS registry as well as NICE recommendation on DBS for movement disorders and key priorities.

Steve Ford, Chief Executive, Parkinson's UK, also guided discussions on the understanding of the complexity in delivering a combined approach for research and clinical care.

Next steps suggested were the formation of small working groups on distinct topics who will having meetings interspersed with the biannual national meetings.

The suggested working group topics are:

• Development of the DBS Registry
• A DBS research working group to assess feasibility of a research study
• Teaching and training opportunities, particularly opportunities to develop clinical neurology DBS training fellowships

For more details on getting involved with the working groups, which are open to existing and new UK DBS Network members, please contact [email protected].