Clinical Trials
Dr Pouratian and his team are constantly looking to deliver the most innovative care. He therefore has designed several clinical trials, some designed to help deliver novel therapies for patients and other designed to help us learn more about how the human brain works and how diseases affect the brain. A full listing of these trials can be found here: Search of: Pouratian – List Results – ClinicalTrials.gov
Currently, Dr Pouratian is enrolling patients in two separate trials of deep brain stimulation for depression.
In the first trial, Dr Pouratian and his team are using cutting edge imaging to identify the best spot in the brain to stimulate for depression. Deep brain stimulators are implanted in those precise areas and patients are treated with DBS for 12 months. After 12 months, if patients are responding to the therapy, there is a randomized phase to determine whether the improvement is actually related to the brain stimulator. Further details can be found here: Tractography Guided Subcallosal Cingulate Deep Brain Stimulation for Treatment Resistant Depression – Full Text View – ClinicalTrials.gov
In the second trial, Dr Pouratian, in collaboration with a team at Baylor College of Medicine, is evaluating a novel approach to deep brain stimulation for depression. In this study, we try and learn as much as we can about how the brain is affected by depression and to tune the brain stimulators based on this knowledge. In addition to the deep brain stimulator implantation, patients are hospitalized for 10 days while we record additional signals from the brain to guide the therapy. Additional details can be found here: Deep Brain Stimulation (DBS) for Depression Using Directional Current Steering and Individualized Network Targeting – Full Text View – ClinicalTrials.gov
In addition to these clinical trials, Dr Pouratian offers deep brain stimulation for obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD, based on FDA Humanitarian Device Exemption) and for chronic pain (off-label use of deep brain stimulation).
