COLUMBUS, Ohio — There is a breakthrough treatment for one of the most common nervous system disorders — essential tremors.
According to the National Institutes of Health, a key feature of the condition is rhythmic shaking in both hands and arms during action without other neurological signs.
It's a condition Kathleen Dirol said she just lived with until she received a high-frequency ultrasound. Dirol said the treatment brings a night and day difference to her quality of life.
"Drinking, I was spilling. I was tripping. My voice even was kind of like a Katharine Hepburn sound," Dirol said.
The disorder, which is hereditary, most often affects the hands, but it can also affect the head, voice, arms or legs.
Dirol had the high-frequency ultrasound a year ago. The procedure creates a controlled stroke to knock out the tremor.
There is a writing-skills assessment before and after the procedure to show what kind of difference the treatment makes.
OhioHealth Riverside neurologist Angela Hardwick said the results of the treatment should last the rest of the patient's life.
"When you think of an ultrasound, people probably think of a beam of ultrasound. It's not one, it's actually a thousand beams of ultrasound that we tell to go to one part of the brain and to heat it up and make a very rounded, perfect-looking stroke," Dr. Hardwick said.
For Dirol, the results were immediate.
"I thought I would have to practice writing my name. I wrote a beautiful name and I took a glass with a straw and took a drink. I mean I started to cry. I couldn't believe it, it was instant."
NIH reports that essential tremors can start at any age, but usually, they appear during adolescence or between 40 and 50 years old.