ISSN: 2041-6792

Clinical Investigation

Psychosurgery High Impact Factor Journals

Psychosurgery is usually reserved for intractable cases of OCD, but 50–85% of cases show improvement at 1-year follow-up after the psychosurgical procedure. Several procedures are tried, including cingulotomy, subcaudate tractotomy, limbic leukotomy, and anterior capsulotomy, but none has been shown to be statistically superior to the others. More recently, several studies have shown that deep brain stimulation may provide similar relief without permanent lesioning. The Food and Drug Administration gave approval for the procedure in 2009 for extreme cases under its Humanitarian Device Exemption. When psychosurgery as a surgery for treatment of severe psychiatric conditions emerged within the mid-20th century, the sole method available to neurosurgeons for modulating the brain was through destruction of targeted neural tissue. From Burckhardt to Fulton to Moniz and Freeman came the experience of ablation of lobe tissue for the treatment of psychiatric disorders. However, the indiscriminate use of crude and enormous surgical interventions often led to dreadful consequences like radical personality changes and cognitive decline37. The discovery of effective pharmacotherapy in 1960s seemed to become a panacea. Alas, it turned out not to be the case. There remain an outsized number of patients affected by psychiatric disease without hope for improvement aside from through surgical means. It is for this reason that the impetus for psychiatric surgery still remains.    

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