Published online Sep 19, 2021. doi: 10.5498/wjp.v11.i9.659
Peer-review started: February 28, 2021
First decision: April 20, 2021
Revised: May 2, 2021
Accepted: August 18, 2021
Article in press: August 18, 2021
Published online: September 19, 2021
Twenty years after the first deep brain stimulation (DBS) implantation in a patient with obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD), we review all the information published to date regarding the efficacy and tolerability of this therapeutic option for severe obsessive patients resistant to pharmacological approaches and behavioral therapy.
There are still many unknowns regarding the benefits and risks of using DBS in OCD. The main ones are the optimal anatomical targets, the best stimulation parameters, the long-term effects of the therapy or the possibility of establishing clinical or biological factors associated with response. Responding to them would allow optimizing the results of this therapeutic alternative, with a high economic and human resources cost, and not without potentially serious risks.
The main objectives of this systematic review were to summarize existing knowledge regarding efficacy and tolerability of DBS in treatment-resistant OCD as well as to analyze the possible existence of response predictors that allow improving the selection of candidates. We confirmed that DBS proved to be an effective and safe alternative for two out of three severe and resistant OCD patients who received it. Although we did not detect any clear predictor of response, there are promising proposals based on the use of neuroimaging tools to individualize treatment that should be analyzed in depth in future research.
We performed a comprehensive search in the PubMed, Cochrane, Scopus, and ClinicalTrials.gov databases from inception to December 31, 2020 with “(Obsessive-compulsive disorder OR OCD) AND (deep brain stimulation OR DBS)” as searching strategy. Inclusion criteria were a main diagnosis of OCD, DBS conducted for therapeutic purposes in humans and variation in symptoms of OCD measured by the Yale-Brown Obsessive-Compulsive scale (Y-BOCS) as primary outcome. Data was recorded using a standardized collection tool and analyzed with descriptive statistics. Risk of bias was assessed using the Cochrane Handbook for Systematic Reviews of Interventions for randomized controlled trials and the Newcastle-Ottawa Scale for observational studies.
Our systematic review detected 40 studies fulfilling inclusion criteria. 29 of them reported results on short-term response to DBS in 230 patients (follow-up: 18.5 ± 8 mo, range: 7-36) and eleven on long-term response in 155 subjects (63.7 ± 20.7 mo, range: 38-96). Mean Y-BOCS reduction reported on short-term studies was 47.4% ± 21% and on long-term studies 47.2% ± 9.9%, confirming the long-term stability of the response. A significantly greater number of patients fulfilled criteria for response (Y-BOCS reduction > 35%) on the long-term studies (70.7%) than in the short-term ones (60.6%), although the maximum symptom reduction was achieved in general in the first 12-14 mo after DBS implantation. Comorbid depressive symptoms tend to improve in parallel to obsessive symptoms, although this correlation was not observed in all patients. DBS was well-tolerated by most OCD patients, with reversible hypomania as the most frequently reported side effect associated to stimulation. No clear clinical or biological predictors of response emerged from our data, probably due to the high heterogeneity on DBS application conditions in OCD patients.
Our results underscore the importance of exploring new strategies that allow individualizing the conditions of application of DBS in OCD, combining neuroimaging data and a detailed analysis of the patient's symptoms.
Future directions on research on DBS application in OCD should focus on establishing which individual factors at the clinical and/or neuroimaging level can allow us to establish which will be the target and the optimal stimulation conditions for each patient, since the results show that although the standard application of the technique is effective and safe for 2 out of 3 operated patients, there are still patients who do not benefit from the treatment.