Mental Health-Related Healthcare Use Following Bilateral Deep Brain Stimulation For Parkinson's Disease.

Westbay LC, Cao L, Burnett-Zeigler I, Reizine N, Barton B, Ippolito D, Weaver FM, Stroupe KT. Mental Health-Related Healthcare Use Following Bilateral Deep Brain Stimulation For Parkinson's Disease. Journal of Parkinson's disease. 2015 Jan 1; 5(3):497-504.

Related HSR&D Project(s)

• RCS 98-354 – Research Career Scientist Award
• IIR 08-124 – Cost Effectiveness of Deep Brain Stimulation for Parkinson's Disease

Dimensions for VA is a web-based tool available to VA staff that enables detailed searches of published research and research projects.

If you have VA-Intranet access, click here for more information vaww.hsrd.research.va.gov/dimensions/

VA staff not currently on the VA network can access Dimensions by registering for an account using their VA email address.    Search Dimensions for VA for this citation
* Don't have VA-internal network access or a VA email address? Try searching the free-to-the-public version of Dimensions

Search for Abstract from PubMed

---

Abstract:

BACKGROUND: The subthalamic nucleus (STN) and the globus pallidus internus (GPi) are both effective targets for deep brain stimulation (DBS) to relieve motor symptoms of Parkinson's disease. However, studies have reported varied effects on mental health-related adverse events and depressed mood following DBS. OBJECTIVE: The current observational study sought to compare mental health healthcare utilization and costs for three years following STN or GPi DBS. METHODS: For a cohort of Veterans (n? = 161) with Parkinson's disease who participated in a larger multi-site randomized trial, we compared mental health outpatient visits, medication use, inpatient admissions, and associated costs by DBS target site (STN vs. GPi). RESULTS: Neither group nor time differences were significant for mental health outpatient or inpatient utilization following DBS. Overall costs associated with mental health visits and medications did not differ by time or by group. However, the percentage of patients with mental health medication use increased in the 6-month and 6 to 12 month periods post-surgery. The STN group had significantly greater increase in medication use at 6 to 12 months post-surgery compared to the GPi group (p? < ?0.05). CONCLUSION: Despite a brief increase in medication use following surgery, this study suggests that mental health healthcare use and costs are stable over time and similar between DBS targets. Prior research findings of mental health-related adverse events and mood following DBS did not translate to greater mental health service utilization in our cohort. The changes seen in the year following surgery may reflect temporary adjustments with stabilization over time.