{"id":596851,"date":"2026-07-21T13:47:11","date_gmt":"2026-07-21T13:47:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/596851\/"},"modified":"2026-07-21T13:47:11","modified_gmt":"2026-07-21T13:47:11","slug":"preoperative-treatment-with-bisphosphonates-does-not-change-the-thermal-response-of-focused-ultrasound-thalamotomy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/596851\/","title":{"rendered":"Preoperative Treatment with Bisphosphonates Does Not Change the Thermal Response of Focused Ultrasound Thalamotomy"},"content":{"rendered":"

Authors:<\/strong>
Matthew C. Henn; Nemanja Useinovic; James Cahill; Helen Shi; Beck Shafie
ORCID logo ; Haley Smith; Molly Joyce; Tim Valuev; Christian G. Lopez-Ramos; Ahmed M. Raslan; Daniel R. Cleary<\/p>\n

\n

Introduction:<\/strong>\u00a0Skull density ratio (SDR) is an important criterion for predicting efficacy of high-intensity focused ultrasound (HIFU) thalamotomy for essential tremor and tremor-dependent Parkinson\u2019s disease. Bisphosphonates are known to increase bone density and are postulated to raise SDR and improve HIFU energy transmission efficiency. However, the impact of bisphosphonate pre-treatment on HIFU outcomes has not been investigated.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Methods:<\/strong>\u00a0A retrospective analysis was conducted on the sonication parameters of patients with SDR <0.45 who were pre-treated off-label with bisphosphonates prior to HIFU. For comparison, the sonication parameters were also collected for patients with SDR <0.45 not pre-treated with bisphosphonates, patients with mid-range SDR (0.45\u20130.49), and patients with high SDR (0.5\u20130.55). All patients underwent HIFU thalamotomy between March 2022 and December 2024.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Results:<\/strong>\u00a0The bisphosphonate pre-treatment group (28 patients) and the low-SDR untreated group (29 patients) both had mean SDRs of 0.41. Respectively, the bisphosphonate-treated and low-SDR untreated group had mean final sonication energy of 23 kJ versus 26 kJ, final sonication duration of 27.1 versus 28.6 s, mean maximum temperature of 52.8\u00b0C versus 53.2\u00b0C, and average of 5.6 versus 4.9 sonications per treatment (p\u00a0> 0.05 for each comparison). No significant differences between the two low-SDR groups were found for the thermal efficiency of sonication. Compared to the bisphosphonate-treated low-SDR group, the mid- and high-SDR groups exhibited significantly decreased sonication energy (p\u00a0< 0.0001), final sonication duration (p\u00a0< 0.0001), and higher final sonication max temperature (p\u00a0< 0.01). Across all patients, a negative correlation was observed between SDR and final sonication energy (p\u00a0< 0.0001,\u00a0r\u00a0= \u22120.48) and a positive correlation was observed between SDR and last sonication temperature (p\u00a0< 0.005,\u00a0r\u00a0= 0.27), although in the low-SDR cohort, a correlation was not observed. No clinically significant differences were found in demographics, self-reported tremor improvement, or incidence of side effects.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Conclusion:<\/strong>\u00a0No significant differences were found in sonication response parameters between the bisphosphonate-treated and untreated low-SDR groups, whereas mid- and high-SDR groups had significantly reduced sonication energy and time to produce greater heat. These findings show that while bisphosphonates are an established way of raising bone density in osteoporosis, pre-treatment with bisphosphonates does not shift the sonication response from that of a low SDR to a mid-range SDR. Additionally, other factors besides just skull density likely determine the thermal response to sonication.<\/p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Authors:Matthew C. Henn; Nemanja Useinovic; James Cahill; Helen Shi; Beck Shafie ORCID logo ; Haley Smith; Molly Joyce;…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":596852,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[74],"tags":[7260,252662,25137,18,11293,252663,252664,474,19,17,941,18862,82],"class_list":["post-596851","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-technology","tag-all-journal-news","tag-bisphosphonatesfocused-ultrasoundhigh-intensity-focused-ultrasound-hifuskull-density-ratiothalamotomy","tag-bone-health","tag-eire","tag-ethics-and-research-methods","tag-focused-ultrasound","tag-focused-ultrasound-research-news","tag-healthcare","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-newswise","tag-parkinsons-disease","tag-technology"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@ie\/116958281392532300","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/596851","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=596851"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/596851\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/596852"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=596851"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=596851"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=596851"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}