Older Candidates for Subthalamic Deep Brain Stimulation in Parkinson's Disease Have a Higher Incidence of Psychiatric Serious Adverse Events

Objective: To investigate the incidence of serious adverse events (SAE) of subthalamic deep brain stimulation (STN-DBS) in elderly patients with Parkinson's disease (PD). Methods: We investigated a group of 26 patients with PD who underwent STN-DBS at mean age 63.2 ± 3.3 years. The operated patients from the EARLYSTIM study (mean age 52.9 ± 6.6) were used as a comparison group. Incidences of SAE were compared between these groups. Results: A higher incidence of psychosis and hallucinations was found in these elderly patients compared to the younger patients in the EARLYSTIM study (p < 0.01). Conclusions: The higher incidence of STN-DBS-related psychiatric complications underscores the need for comprehensive psychiatric pre- and postoperative assessment in older DBS candidates. However, these psychiatric SAE were transient, and the benefits of DBS clearly outweighed its adverse effects.