#47: Marwan Hariz & Joachim Krauss – Toward a third wave of pallidotomies?

Marwan Hariz and Joachim Krauss need no introduction. First, because they are famous, and second, because they have been on the show, before. In fact, Marwan Hariz is the first to have been on the podcast three times, first, as an early adopter and trustee in episode 3, second, together with Joachim Krauss and Christian Moll in episode 33, and now again with Joachim in the present episode. I met Joachim in Grenoble at a meeting celebrating the 30th year anniversary of STN-DBS. He mentioned that the last episode had been fun, and that it could be great to do an episode on the history of pallidotomies. Needless to say, I would always spend as much time as I can get to speaking with these legends in the field, so of course we went ahead with the idea. I think there are few people that know as much about the history of stereotactic surgery as Joachim and Marwan. In fact, recently, they have been designated as the Historians of the ESSFN and also of the WSSFN (the latter together with Rees Cosgrove).

In this conversation, I learned that pallidotomies came in two waves throughout history, and we may be witnessing the beginning of the third wave now with the growing popularity of focused ultrasound surgery. So sit back and enjoy while Marwan and Joachim take us on a ride through the centuries to shed light on the convoluted historical path of the surgical procedure we call pallidotomy.