Post-Surgical Follow-Up

Activa Therapy patients return to the surgeon to have their sutures removed on a date determined by the neurosurgeon and neurologist. Two to four weeks after surgery, a patient can go in for the first office visit to have the neurostimulator turned on and programmed.

Patients often experience symptom relief after the surgery without stimulation. This "microlesion effect" typically wears off in the days following surgery. Some physicians consider this effect the result of edema around the implanted lead in the brain. When the edema has subsided, the patient's stimulation can be adjusted to maximize therapeutic benefit and minimize side effects.

Some physicians ask patients to stop taking some or all of their medications for 12 to 24 hours before programming to best observe the effects of stimulation. Patients with severe symptoms may find that reducing or stopping their medications is too uncomfortable. For those patients, the amount of medication they take may be reduced but not eliminated during programming. Patients are typically given a dose of medication following programming to ensure that stimulation effects are stable under medication.

The patient will typically return to his or her physician frequently in the first few months following surgery to optimize stimulation and titrate medications. Patients then resume a normal schedule of visits with their neurologist to monitor the progression of their disease and adjust stimulation as necessary.

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