• Submitted by: Luis Manuel Mazorra
• Health and Medicine
• 04 / 13 / 2012

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In Cuba, a method was developed to treat patients with Parkinson's disease who do not respond adequately to conventional therapy. This surgical procedure has had very good results at the National Hospital Alejandro Posadas in Argentina, announced the Ministry of Health of the nation.
The surgeries are performed free of charge and with the use of highly complex technology, consisting of a stereotactic system and a software processing microregistro brain imaging, detailed the health portfolio.

Based on an agreement between Argentina and Cuba signed in May 2010 began to implement the new method without any of the 27 patients operated on so far have had complications, in turn explained the hospital's executive director, Lucrecia Raffo.

So far it has been operating on average one patient per week, but the goal is to increase the number of interventions in the operating room as more available and move the works to expand and remodel the hospital, said Raffo.

The Cuban method was developed by the International Center for Neurological Restoration (Ciren) in Havana and the Cuban company Tecnosuma and serves to implement a palliative treatment for people with movement disorders including Parkinson's disease, dystonia and other diseases.

This resource provides a specialized surgical technique that can improve symptoms and reduce dependence on drugs in people suffering from this disease group and benefits from 4 to 10 percent of affected patients.

According to estimates by the Ministry of Health of the Nation, between one and 1.5 percent of people over 65 years in Argentina suffer from Parkinson's disease, a disease whose incidence is two per thousand in the general population.