The Hong Kong Movement Disorder Society (HKMDS) is a local organisation aims to advance the knowledge and treatment of movement disorders to health professionals and public, to enhance researches in this field, and to facilitate academic collaborations between various professional disciplines in Hong Kong who are interested in this field. On 22-Oct 2022, the Annual Scientific Meeting (ASM) of the HKMDS was successfully organised with the participation of renowned experts and clinicians in neurosciences and related fields from both Hong Kong and overseas. The ASM 2022 was the third year for the HKMDS launching a full virtual event due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Yet, the program of the ASM was comprehensive and insightful covering various topics related to clinical management of movement disorder. Moreover, the ASM included virtual booth exhibition, which provided the participants with information about latest treatments in the discipline.
The ASM started with the session highlighting innovations in Deep brain stimulation (DBS), which is an effective, long-term treatment for movement disorders like essential tremor, Parkinson’s disease, or dystonia. The efficacy and safety of DBS depend on the spatial restriction of the stimulation field to a functional target responsible for the beneficial effect of DBS. One of the latest advances is that certain DBS devices are able to record brain activity. Also, the first directional, sensing-enabled lead has recently been developed to enhance the detection of local field potentials (LFPs), which are brain signals that correlate with the severity of Parkinson’s disease symptoms and are 1 million times smaller than DBS stimulation pulses. When physicians can detect LFPs, they can correlate these brain signals with stimulation and events capturing medication, symptoms, or side effects to tailor the stimulation by allowing a fine tuning of the volume of tissue activated (VTA) as patient needs.
The directional, sensing-enabled lead for optimising DBS therapy
Practical issues in DBS were discussed during the ASM of HKMDS
Virtual lecture theatre and virtual booth exhibition at the ASM of HKMDS
