Article preview from IN VIVO - May, 2012
Neuronetics Inc. forged a new specialty of sorts, the interventional psychiatrist. Unlike other interventional approaches, the externally applied NeuroStar delivers transcranial magnetic stimulation to the precise area of the brain responsible for intractable depression. The device is changing the lives of psychiatrists who launched “TMS” clinics, hoping to capture the early success, and potentially creating opportunities for medical devices designed to treat other brain-related disorders.
Article preview from IN VIVO - May, 2012
A medical device, on occasion, can spawn a new specialty. A clever engineer designs a device or implant small enough to be deployed by those skilled with a guidewire and catheter, enabling an interventionalist to reach an organ previously accessible only through surgery. Over the past decades, these advances have helped minimize the physical impact of treating a blocked artery, fractured vertebrae or a dangerous spot of cancer. Neuronetics Inc. is an unlikely contributor to this movement. The nine-year-old neurostimulation company created a device capable of safely reaching one of the most remote areas of the body – the brain. And, in doing so, the company created a new specialty of sorts, one that carries a somewhat contradictory tag – the interventional psychiatrist.
Unlike other interventional approaches, Neuronetics’ NeuroStar TMS Therapy System doesn’t require an entry incision to access its targeted organ. Instead, the externally applied NeuroStar delivers transcranial magnetic stimulation, alternative waves of magnetic pulses, to the precise area of the brain responsible for deep, intractable depression, the kind of disease that’s resistant to medication.(See"Neuronetics Inc." — START-UP, February 2005.) In those drug-resistant depression cases, Neuronetics reports seeing success roughly half the time, with one-third of TMS recipients going into complete remission. In this case, the “interventional” approach isn’t an alternative to highly invasive surgeries – as most interventional movements tend to be – but rather a successful treatment that replaces a lifetime dependence on anti-depressants and other pharmaceuticals, which come with side effects and dependencies that offer their own sets of risks. TMS also may help stave off invasive electro-shock therapy treatments and their deleterious side effects.
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