The All Ireland Deep Brain Stimulation Service (DBS) is part of the DNI service. DBS is an effective treatment for a subset of patients suffering with disabling neurological movement disorders where symptoms are inadequately controlled with oral medications, namely Parkinson’s Disease (PD), essential tremor (ET) and dystonia

The DNI is a registered charity, a business and a Centre of Excellence for the care of patients with neurological disease including DBS, Parkinson’s disease, Stroke, Epilepsy, Multiple Sclerosis, Headache, Neuropathy, Myopathy and Muscular dystrophy.

They aim to provide high quality care to patients provided by consultants, non-consultant hospital doctors, clinical nurse specialists and services allied to medicine. By offering this multidisciplinary team approach, patients travelling distances can be seen not just by a doctor but also by physiotherapist and other services.

Hand-in-hand with good clinical care they are increasing education and research in clinical neuroscience. The marriage of both clinical care and academics leads to better care for patients. For example the DNI runs regular monthly educational talks for patients with different neurological problems given by either a clinical nurse specialist or the consultant. They also have a number of research projects ongoing  studying different aspects of gait, reaction times, skin sebum production in Parkinson’s disease in addition to other studies looking at genetics and biomarkers for Parkinsons Disease and drug discovery in neurodegenerative disease including Parkinson’s and frontotemporal dementia.

The DNI can only be a success if they have sustained funding to retain staff and expand their services. I would welcome and urge people to help support so they can expand, develop and maintain their services now and into the future.