Mayo Clinic Health Manager
Get free personalized health guidance for you and your family.
Get Started
About our e-newsletters
- Free e-newsletters
- Mayo Clinic expertise
- We do not share your e-mail address
Housecall, our weekly general-interest e-newsletter, keeps you up to date on a wide variety of health topics with timely, reliable, practical information, recipes, blogs, questions and answers with Mayo Clinic experts and more. Our biweekly topic-specific e-newsletters also include blogs, questions and answers with Mayo Clinic experts, and other useful information that will help you manage your health.
Housecall Archives
Mayo Clinic Housecall
Stay up to date on the latest health information.
What you get
- Free weekly e-newsletter
- Mayo Clinic expertise
- Recipes, tools and other helpful information
- We do not share your e-mail address
How you prepare
By Mayo Clinic staffBecause deep brain stimulation is experimental, it's available only through participation in clinical trials. Because of the risks involved, its use is limited to people who have severe, debilitating depression that has not improved with standard treatments.
First, weigh the pros and cons
Deep brain stimulation is a serious and potentially risky procedure because it requires brain surgery. Even if you might be eligible for a clinical trial to test deep brain stimulation, you and your doctors must carefully weigh the pros and cons of the procedure. If your depression prevents you from going about your daily activities or is life-threatening, you may be more willing to face the risks involved with deep brain stimulation. But you still must be screened by a team of medical professionals to make sure deep brain stimulation is a good and safe option for you.
Next, preparing for surgery
Before surgery, you need a medical evaluation with your doctor or neurosurgeon to make sure it's safe for you and a good option in your case. You may need a full physical and psychiatric evaluation. This may include neuropsychological evaluations to determine your level of intellectual and cognitive ability before the procedure so that potential changes can be monitored over time. You also need brain-imaging studies, such as an MRI, before the surgery.
