Doctors in China Fuels the Brain to Treat Mentally Ill Patients

Jakarta, probably only those who dare brave or desperate to try this therapy. There is a Chinese medicine made by burning brain cells to cure patients of mental disorders. Well, maybe just a mental patient who was willing to try.

This treatment is a medical fact, but it is still a matter of controversy among scholars until now. The procedure is called ablation nucleus accumbens, where the surgeon burn the brain responsible for processing pleasure.
This procedure was banned in 2004, but some hospitals still seem to do it on the patient's mental illness such as depression, obsessive compulsive disorder and addiction. Some operations are also carried out for research purposes.
As quoted from the Medical Daily, Friday (14/12/2012), the operation is performed with the patient awake. Part of the brain that are targeted are the nucleus accumbens produces dopamine and endogenous hormones. A small number of brain cells in this area will be burned to death.
The brain is responsible for the addiction and also controls the feeling of pleasure. In patients with mental illnesses other than addiction, burning brain cells can be directed to another part responsible for the occurrence of the disease.
This operation had sparked controversy in the west in the 1930's, but the practice has not disappeared altogether. In the United States and Britain, as the operation was carried out less than 25 times a year. Most intended to relieve the symptoms of major depression and obsessive compulsive disorder.
Before undergoing surgery, usually it takes a year to get the patient's consent. According to some experts, this extreme surgery should also seek approval neuroscientists, ethicists, psychiatrists and surgeons advance.
Unfortunately, the treatment procedures in China seems unnecessarily convoluted. A surgeon there claim to have done this procedure many as nearly 1,000 times in 2007. Some patients' families were forced approve this procedure and often causes family members suffering from other disorders that have never experienced before.
For example, there is claimed to be a physically disabled family members after undergoing ablation nucleus accumbens. There is a former female patient who drooled uncontrollably and his right arm paralyzed. There was also a young man who so rambling speech.
Of course, patients who want to undergo this surgery should think a thousand times. In addition to risk, cost is also very expensive and often does not finish with just one treatment. Some doctors peg the cost of U.S. $ 5,000 or approximately USD 48 million, far exceeding the average income of Chinese citizens.
Recent studies published in medical journals in the West explained that this method is very risky. Of the 60 study participants who want to treat addiction, more than half end up with permanent side effects after undergoing ablation of the nucleus accumbens in the form of memory loss.
As many as 53 percent of the study participants underwent a personality change. Doctors say that the changes that occur frequently make patients become more tractable. Within 5 years after surgery, 53 percent of participants recurrent disease.
Sources: http://health.detik.com/read/2012/12/14/115739/2118500/763/