Demographics of focused ultrasound thalamotomy for essential tremor and trends in deep brain stimulation surgery after its introduction in the USA

BACKGROUND: Essential tremor (ET) is a movement disorder that affects 4%–5% of adults >65 years.

For patients with medically refractory ET, neurosurgical interventions such as deep brain stimulation (DBS) and unilateral MR-guided focused ultrasound thalamotomy (MRgFUS) are available.

In this retrospective cohort study, we examined the demographics of patients with ET who have received MRgFUS and evaluated trends in DBS usage in the USA after the introduction of MRgFUS in 2016.

METHODS: We used multiple databases to examine the demographics of patients who received DBS and MRgFUS, and trends in DBS.

To assess the demographics, we queried the TriNetX database from 2003 to 2022 to identify patients diagnosed with ET and stratify them by DBS or MRgFUS treatment by using Current Procedural Terminology codes.

Patient demographics were reported as frequencies and percentages.

To examine the trends in DBS for ET, the yearly frequency of DBS procedures done for ET between 2012 and 2019 was extracted from the National Inpatient Sample (NIS) database, and breakpoint analysis was performed.

Additionally, the yearly frequency of MRgFUS procedures for ET was obtained from Insightec Exlabate.

RESULTS: Most of the patients (88.69%) in the cohort extracted from TriNetX database self-identified as white, followed by black or African American (2.40%) and Asian (0.52%).

A higher percentage of black patients received MRgFUS treatment than DBS (4.10% vs 1.88%).

According to the NIS database, from 2012 to 2020, 13 525 patients received DBS for ET.

CONCLUSION: This study provides an overview of the characteristics of patients who undergo DBS or MRgFUS.

We found notable differences in sex and race among patients who underwent each treatment type.

Additionally, until at least the beginning of 2020, the number of DBS procedures for ET was not negatively affected after the introduction of MRgFUS.