Evaluation of the Benefit Provided by Acupuncture During a Surgery of Deep Brain Stimulation

The effectiveness of Deep Brain Stimulation (DBS) in certain movement disorders is widely demonstrated. The success of this procedure requires that the patient is awake and cooperative. The conditions of this intervention can be difficult to tolerate by the patient for several reasons: long procedure (from 3 to 8 hours), body immobilisation (particularly the head in the stereotactic frame), stress related to the localization of the DBS. It is therefore important to improve the comfort as well as the cooperation of the patient, during implantation of the DBS electrodes, in order to optimize the conditions of the intervention. In addition to analgesia, acupuncture should allow sedation without affecting alertness and should contribute to the regulation of any vegetative reactions during the procedure. Therefore, we hypothesize that acupuncture could improve the quality of care of the patient during a DBS procedure. In practice, this is electroacupuncture that will be used in this research to maintain the stimulation of acupuncture points to an optimal level during the time of the intervention.