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SHREVEPORT, La. (KTAL/KMSS) – April is Parkinson’s Awareness month, and an Ochsner LSU Health Shreveport neurosurgeon performs a life-changing surgery that improves movement disorders in patients.

Dr. Jamie Toms performs a Tremor-Ridding Surgery for patients with movement disorders like Parkinson’s disease. Parkinson’s is a movement disorder caused by nerve cell damage in the brain, causing dopamine levels to drop. Parkinson’s is a degenerative disease that progressively worsens over time.

Toms said the procedure, which provides deep brain stimulation, is effective and yields results.

“It can make they’re walking better, it can make their movement better. It can get rid of tremors,” Toms said. “It usually improves Parkinson’s disease by about 60%. Other diseases like a central tremor and things like that we can get 80%, sometimes 100% of their tremor to go away.”

Toms said patients typically spend one night in the hospital after the procedure and then go home.