Dr. Aaron Bond Introduces New Treatment to Eliminate Essential Tremors

Living with essential tremors and tremor dominant Parkinson’s disease can significantly disrupt a person’s everyday life. At Semmes Murphey, we strive to provide innovative techniques and procedures that help all of our patients return to a sense of normalcy. Semmes Murphey neurosurgeon, Dr. Aaron Bond is upholding that principle by introducing the MR Guided Focused Ultrasound procedure to patients in this region living with tremors. The first few cases have in Dr. Bond's words gone "exactly as planned".

About the first case, Dr. Bond said, "She had a severe tremor at the beginning of the case. She couldn't feed herself. She couldn't write. She couldn't do any of the basic activities of daily living. By the end of the case, her tremor had completely stopped. I saw her in the office three days later, and she told me that she's eating her peas with her fork."

According to Dr. Bond, “many patients with Essential Tremors are either undiagnosed or are treated by their primary care physician and not a neurologist specializing in Movement Disorders.” Also, Dr. Bond states that “patients assume their tremor is a sign of old age and don’t realize that there are treatments out there which can potentially eliminate their tremors. We want to make sure that our patients can get the care to go back to living comfortably."

Highly specialized equipment, training, and practitioners are required for this procedure. As a result, there are only a handful of providers in the US offering this treatment. However, through our partnership with Regional One Health and INSIGHTEC we were able to bring this option to the region. We are proud to have physicians like Dr. Bond, who commit to continuing their development and searching for the best innovative treatments for our patients. Without a doubt, this treatment will improve the livelihood of a great number of Semmes Murphey patients.