Two brain targets, one ultrasound session, for Parkinson's

High-intensity focused ultrasound treats movement disorders without opening the skull: beams converge through bone on a target a few millimetres across and heat it until the tissue stops conducting. The usual target for Parkinson’s tremor is the dentatorubral thalamic tract. It does little for the rigidity and slowness that disable people further along in the disease.

The Advanced Therapies in Movement Disorders program at the CU Anschutz Medical Campus, led by neurologist Drew Kern and neurosurgeon Daniel Kramer, reported on 15 September 2026 that it had treated both the dentatorubral thalamic tract and the pallidothalamic tract in the same session, in two patients with advanced Parkinson’s disease. The tracts lie 6 to 9 mm apart, which is the difficulty: the second lesion has to land without spilling into the first. Each outpatient procedure took about 90 minutes.

One patient reported 60 to 70 percent improvement in rest tremor after the first target and at least 70 percent improvement in stiffness after the second; the other left with no tremor and little rigidity or slowness. The team had previously treated more than 100 patients at the tremor target alone. It describes these as the first dual-target focused-ultrasound procedures in the Rocky Mountain region — a service milestone, not a trial result, and no peer-reviewed report accompanies it.